WIRE WORM AND CLICK BEETLE. 
41 
troublesome; then those seeds which have only lain one season. 
Vetches and Peas are fouling crops, and give shelter to the Worm.— 
(Adam Lee, Lydbury North, Shropshire, for the Eight Hon. the Earl 
of Powis.) 
The cereal crops seem to be the most often affected by Wireworms. 
Wheat, for instance, if sown after “ seeds ” (containing grasses), is 
particularly liable to attack, and Wheat sown on weedy land, especially 
if the weeds be wild grasses, such as the long “water grass,” often 
very common on wet land. I judge that the eggs are laid in the dead 
grass rubbish on the field, and that when the young crops are sown 
and growing (even from January during the spring of the year, if there 
be no frosts) the Wireworm pursues its way from plant to plant, half 
burying itself in the tender stalk, and then, after eating out its heart, 
leaving it for another. 
Mangolds when young are often attacked and destroyed if sown 
after weedy white straw crops that have likewise suffered from the 
Wireworms.—(Bobert L. Pudney, Halstead, Essex.) 
Land is more subject to Wireworms after Clover and Beans, but 
there is no crop that increases Wireworm so much as “ Couch ” and 
weeds, and often when land has been fallowed the previous summer 
the Wireworms are quite as destructive in the next spring as they are 
on the Clover ley Wheat.—(Gr. Burgiss, The Farm, Strutherglen, 
Petworth.) 
Certainly I think there is more danger from Wireworms after 
Clover than after any other crop. 1 believe after a crop of Beans or 
Cabbage they are also troublesome, but consider this may be because 
if a large amount of Bean-stalks or Cabbage-stumps are ploughed 
down the land would lie so open it could not be properly consolidated 
by rolling, and the Wireworm would have a chance to harbour and 
work in the stumps. After these crops, therefore, the land should be 
got as free as possible from stalks and stumps, as well as weeds, before 
ploughing.—(M. Locke Blake, Ilminster.) 
I have observed that the Wireworms have appeared upon land 
immediately after a Turnip crop when not grazed by sheep or other 
animals. I have hitherto supposed that the appearance of the Wire- 
worms after Turnips was due to the pulverized condition of the soil 
rather than to the nature of the preceding crop.—(L. P. Williams, 
Penberry, St. David’s.) 
