84 
House & Garden 
SowSalzeb'sSeeds 
Nature offers soil, rain, and warm 
sunshine right outside your door. Old 
Mother Karth invites you to raise tender 
vegetables, tempting fruits and glorious 
flowers. Use Nature’s gifts wisely and 
she will return you good crops. 
Careful soil preparation is necessary 
to success. Most essential is the quality 
of the seed you sow. For fifty-two years 
Salzer’s Seeds have been famous as 
seeds of quality. Thousands of garden¬ 
ers have used them with success. 
Salzer Seeds are pure bred strains, of 
proven vitality, demonstrated in actual 
soil tests. Salzer high quality is the re¬ 
sult of constant experimentation to pro¬ 
duce better seeds. 
Salzer’s Seeds produce plants worthy 
of the intelligent cultivation that marks 
the well-cared-for-garden. 
JOHN A. SALZER SEED CO. 
America’s Largest Mail Order Seed House 
Box 12, LA CROSSE, WISCONSIN 
The Flanders Poppy 
In Flanders Field the poppies 
blow 
Between the crosses row on row. 
That mark our place; and 
in the sky 
The larks still bravely sing- 
ing. fly 
Scarce heard amid the guns 
below. 
—Extract from CoJ. McCrae^s 
well known poem. 
We have secured a 
limited quantity of seed 
to introduce this blos¬ 
som of immortal mem¬ 
ory to America. (See 
the illustration belowr.) 
It is 15c a pkg. or 65c an 
ounce. 
THE EUROPEAN CORN BORER 
A MENACE TO OUR CORN CROP 
By D. J. CAFFREY 
Scientific Assistant, Cereal and Forage Insect Investigations. 
T he future of the country’s corn 
crop is seriously threatened by the 
presence of the European corn 
borer in eastern Massachusetts. This 
insect has long been recognized in 
Europe and Asia as one of the worst 
pests attacking corn, millet, hops, and 
hemp. In France and Hungary, ac¬ 
cording to European entomologists, 
from one-fourth to one-half of these 
crops is frequently destroyed by it. 
The European corn borer probably is 
the most injurious plant pest that has 
yet been introduced into this country. 
It is now known to be present in an 
area of about 320 square miles near 
Boston, Mass. Unless repressed and 
restricted it may spread throughout the 
country and cause serious and wide¬ 
spread losses to the corn crop. 
The larvae, or borers, tunnel through 
all parts of the corn plant and destroy 
or severely injure the ears and stalks. 
The pest also attacks celery, Swiss 
chard, beans, beets, spinach, oats, po¬ 
tatoes, tomatoes, turnips, dahlias, chrys¬ 
anthemums, gladiolus, geraniums, timo¬ 
thy, and certain weeds and grasses. 
There are two generations each year, 
so that multiplication and spread are 
rapid, especially as very few of the 
borers are destroyed by natural enemies. 
The winter is passed in the larva or 
borer stage within infested plants. 
To suppress this pest burn or other¬ 
wise destroy during the fall, winter, or 
spring all cornstalks, corn stubble, crop 
remnants, and stalks of garden plants, 
weeds, or wild grasses within the in¬ 
fested areas likely to harbor the over¬ 
wintering borers. Work of this kind is 
now being conducted by the Federal, 
State, and local authorities, and the 
hearty cooperation of all property 
owners, tenants, or other interested per¬ 
sons is earnestly solicited. This work 
must be done very thoroughly. The 
borers in a few overlooked plants may 
increase by the end of the season to as 
many as were present before the 
clean-up. 
At the present time corn is the prin¬ 
cipal crop attacked by the European 
corn borer in Massachusetts. This in¬ 
cludes sweet corn, field corn, and fod¬ 
der corn. In areas where corn is not 
grown, or in the vicinity of badly in¬ 
fested corn plants, the borers commonly 
attack a great variety of other plants, 
including celery, Swiss chard, green or 
string beans, beets, spinach, oats, po¬ 
tatoes, turnips, dahlias, chrysanthe¬ 
mums, timothy, and several different 
species of weeds and wild grasses. 
Character of Injury to Corn 
The larvae or borers of the European 
corn borer tunnel through all parts of 
the corn plant except the fibrous roots. 
They even feed within the midrib and 
upon the surface of the leaf blades. 
They cause their most serious damage, 
however, by their work in the stalks 
and ears, which they partially or totally 
destroy. Generally, they enter the stalk 
at its upper end near the base of the 
tassel and at first tunnel upward. This 
damage so weakens the tassel stalk 
that it breaks over before the tassel 
matures, resulting in loss of pollen and 
the lack of normal grain formation on 
the ears. 
After destroying the tassel the borers 
tunnel downward through the stalk, 
gradually increasing the size of their 
tunnels as they develop. Instead of 
entering the stalk near the tassel many 
of the borers enter between the leaf 
sheath and stalk at a point lower down 
and tunnel upward or downward, ac¬ 
cording to their individual preferences. 
Small holes in the stalk with sawdust¬ 
like extrusions indicate where the borer 
is at work. When several or many 
borers are present within the same 
stalk, as is frequently the case, the stalk 
becomes reduced to a mere shell, filled 
with fragments of the frass or castings 
of the borers. This injury cuts off the 
supply of nutriment to the developing 
ear and greatly weakens the stalk, which 
eventually breaks over. 
Some of the partly grown borers 
leave the stalk and enter the ears 
through the husk and also through the 
stem and cob. Here they feed upon the 
immature grain and tunnel through all 
parts of the cob. During July and 
August many of the moths deposit their 
eggs directly upon the newly developed 
ears of late corn. 
Character of Injury to Plants Other 
Than Corn 
The stalks of celery, potatoes, toma¬ 
toes, oats, dahlias, chrysanthemums, 
gladiolus, and geraniums, as well as the 
leafstems and leaves of Swiss chard, 
beets, and spinach, are entered and 
damaged by the borers in a manner 
similar to that described for corn. Oc¬ 
casionally the borers are found tunnel¬ 
ing within the pods, immature seeds, 
and vines of beans. The green seed 
heads of timothy and the leaf stems of 
turnips are sometimes fed upon exter¬ 
nally by the borers. In addition to the 
actual loss caused by the work of the 
borers in these crops there is also the 
possibility that some of their products 
when shipped to market may contain 
the insect and thus serve as carriers of 
the pest to new localities. 
Methods of Control and Eradication 
A most effective method of destroy¬ 
ing the European corn borer is to burn, 
in areas of known or suspected infesta¬ 
tion, all of the previous year’s corn¬ 
stalks, corn stubble, crop remnants, and 
stalks of garden plants, weeds, and 
larger grasses that may contain the 
overwintering borers. This must be 
done during the late fall, winter, and 
early spring while the borers are within 
such material. 
It should be clearly understood that 
each and every plant likely to be in¬ 
fested must be destroyed. This in¬ 
cludes the stubble and upper part of the 
roots. Occasional plants, or parts of 
plants, which may seem hardly worth 
the trouble to clean up, are likely to 
harbor enough borers to give rise, by 
the end of the season, to as many in¬ 
sects as were present before the clean¬ 
up operations began. 
Burning is undoubtedly the most 
effective and cheapest method at pres¬ 
ent known for the destruction of in¬ 
fested material, especially during the 
late fall, winter, and spring, when the 
vegetation is dead and dry. As pre¬ 
viously stated, in order to be effective, 
all parts of the plant must be burned, 
including the stubble and upper parts 
of the root. It may be found necessary 
to sprinkle the plants with oil or to use 
other fuel in order to secure the com¬ 
plete combustion of the material, espe¬ 
cially if it is damp. 
In cornfields where the fodder is not 
used for feed the plants may be pulled 
up by the roots, or plowed out, and 
then collected in piles and burned 
When the stalks are cut for fodder the 
stubble should be plowed out, raked up 
in piles, and burned. 
