E. A. ORMEROD-PREVENTION OF INSECT-INJURY. 
5 
the vermin, of course taking measures to prevent those that drop 
down from returning again. Where the ground is bare, merely 
giving it a good trampling will destroy large numbers of fallen 
caterpillars, and if a ring of gas-lime is just thrown with a spade 
round the trunk of the tree, of course not touching it in case of the 
gas-lime being fresh, all regress is stopped. 
Beating on to large cloths is a good plan with the wingless 
beetles, such as some weevils, which thus may be destroyed in large 
numbers at night; and in large attacks of beetles, such for instance 
as cockchafers, which lie for a short time on the ground and then 
take wing, some assistants, such as poultry, or better still, pigs, 
whose energy is unbounded in the service, are invaluable in com¬ 
pleting the operation. 
Again, looking at general methods of treatment, where the ground 
has been occupied by infested crops, thorough digging, trenching, 
or ploughing (of which the details would be too tedious to enter on 
here) which would turn some part of the soil so deeply down that 
the contained vermin, whether as perfect insects, chrysalids, larvae, 
or eggs, could trouble us no further, and would throw part on the 
surface to the birds, or other agents of destruction, would all be 
useful; and besides the mitigation of evil we may get by reason¬ 
able general treatment, the more we examine into the life-histories 
of our commonly injurious crop-pests, the more we find that there 
is usually some point at which the injury they do lies open to 
special measures of prevention—literally a point where we may be 
before-hand with it. 
Dressings and washings, and other applications, require much 
knowledge in the applicant to make them serviceable, and often 
only add to the expenses of the attack. Dor instance, in the case 
of turnip-fly, or flea-beetle, the dustings which are applied on a 
dry hot day, or even on a dewless late evening, or early morning, 
may probably be only a loss of so much money for labour and 
material per acre, whilst if applied when there was moisture and 
the leaping legs of the flea-beetle were so clogged therewith that 
it could not spring away, the dusting would take effect, first by 
falling on it before it had skipped out of reach, next by sticking to 
it, to its great injury. 
Similarly with aphides—many of them have an exterior of a 
nature that repels all merely fluid washes, and often a mere watery 
wash runs off from them as from a duck’s back, and unless it 
lodges amongst the crannies formed by their aggregated numbers, 
or poisons their food, they remain unharmed,—whilst if something 
adhesive, as soft soap, is added, the application remains and has 
due effect. 
It is in points of this nature that the agriculturists of the United 
States of America, also of Ontario, and possibly of other Canadian 
States, have such a great advantage over ourselves. The great 
mass of practical information published by the Entomological De¬ 
partment of the United States Government gives a large amount 
that is intelligible to general readers as to the life-histories and 
