{ § 
750 
computed at seven millions, of which 2,400,000 
were calculated to be sown with wheat, and as 
only one-half of the wheat sown is supposed to 
be on clover leys, old pastures, &c., our calcula- 
tions must be confined to 1,200,000 acres, instead 
of 2,400,000; this will give 60,000 acres as an- 
nually destroyed by the insect in question, which 
replanted, at one bushel per acre, will require 
60,000 bushels of seed, which, at 8s. per bushel, 
are worth £24,000. Besides this, although no 
extra expense is incurred by the farmer in pre- 
paring the land, yet he has to pay for dibbling- 
in the seed, which, at 5s. 3d. per acre, will cost 
£15,750, or at the full price, 6s. per acre, £18,000. 
If the land require harrowing, there will be a 
further charge of 9d. per acre, or £2,250, not to 
name other items, which render it difficult pre- 
cisely to ascertain the loss of the farmer. If 
the above calculation be thought a fair one, and 
I see no reason why it should not, we find the 
quantity of wheat lessened to the market by the 
depredations of these insects is very frequently, 
if not annually, 60,000 bushels, which occasions 
to the farmers an additional expense of at least 
£15,750.” Instances are frequent of a far greater~ 
proportion of wheat crops being destroyed than 
this calculation suppages; and even a case of the 
most excessive destruction has not been a-want- 
ing,—so excessive as to require the whole field 
to be ploughed up. The attacks, in general, do 
not seem to begin till spring,—though they have 
been supposed by some observers to be made also 
during the winter; and they are indicated by the 
dying off of the lower leaves,—and in the worst 
cases by the falling of the plant.—Oats, in con- 
sequence of being a favourite crop on newly 
broken up leys and pastures, are oftener devas- 
tated to an excessive extent than wheat. Dr. 
Dickson says, “ When this sort of grain is culti- 
vated on such leys as are newly broken up, there 
may frequently be danger, especially where the 
land has been long in the state of grass, both 
from the destructive attacks of insects, and the 
soil becoming too light, open, and porous, from 
the decay of the grassy materials for the support 
of the plant.” The discouraged farmer, in fact, 
is sometimes compelled to lay down valuable 
land as pasture to a very great disadvantage ; 
and in 1842, in many parts of England, the oat- 
crops suffered so severely from the ravages of the 
wire-worms, that it became necessary to plough 
them up and sow a second time.—When the sea- 
son is dry and cold in the early spring months, 
the barley-crops are frequently greatly injured 
by the attacks of the wire-worms ; and this is 
indicated by the young plants changing from a 
healthy green toa sickly yellow.—Potatoes greatly 
suffer in some districts, and do not suffer at all 
in others. This is a very remarkable fact, and 
resembles the curious anomaly in the habits o 
the black caterpillar, which in some districts will 
not touch Swedish turnips and in others will not 
feed on anything else; and hence one writer as- 
WIRE-W ORM. 
serts that the wire-worm will not injure potato 
crops, while others assert that, in many localities, 
it has annually reduced ghem to less than one- 
third. —Crops of cabbages, also, whether in the 
field or in the garden, are sometimes greatly 
ravaged or almost totally destroyed ; and crops 
of carrots, in kitchen-gardens, which have not 
undergone proper rotations, or which have been 
suffered to lie in a rank and weedy condition, 
are often so inveterately attacked. that entire 
series and successions of them more or less com- 
pletely fail—The turnip, however—even not- 
withstanding its being the prey of so many other 
insect enemies—suffers more severely from the 
Wire-worm than any other green crop; and is 
attacked by it in the foliage as well as in the 
root, and at all seasons of the year except during 
frost; and is deprived of as much substance by 
one individual of it as by five or six turnip-flies. 
“The wire-worm,” says Mr. Le Keux, “ begins 
on the edge of the leaf and eats it away like a 
caterpillar, and often cuts the leaf off at the top 
of the stalk, and it may sometimes be found on 
the ground half devoured. The wire-worm,” he 
states, “seldom feeds above ground. in the day- 
time, unless it be cloudy and dark. At such times 
I have observed them devouring the young turnip 
plants before the rough leaf has been formed ; 
but their most destructive operations are carried 
on beneath the surface of the earth, where they 
attack the root; in the very early state of the — 
plant, after eating this through, the upper part. 
of the plant is gradually drawn down into the 
earth and devoured, so that the plants disappear 
without any perceptible cause, and without any 
trace of them being left. In the more advanced 
state of the plant their devastation appears to be 
confined to eating through the root; and having 
thus killed one plant, they proceed to another. 
If a turnip-plant appears drooping (as if from 
the want of water), whilst those in its neigh- 
bourhood are fresh and erect, a wire-worm (some- 
times half-a-dozen) will be sure to be found at 
the-root, if the earth around it be carefully re- 
moved.” 
Wire-worms are to the full as mischievous in 
the garden as in the field; and, in consequence 
of the great variety of plants attacked by them, 
they are'a kind of universal plague to at once the 
cottage cultivator, the market-gardener, the nur- 
seryman, the orchardist, and the florist. Those 
of the spitting click-beetle and the dusky click- 
beetle are particularly abundant and wondrously 
destructive; and as the former of these beetles 
is strongly attached to umbelliferous flowers and 
to nettles, all classes of cultivators ought vigi- 
lantly to keep down fool’s parsley, hemlock, and 
all similar weeds on the banks and hedges in the 
vicinity of their grounds. 
the field, the wire-worm is particularly destruc- 
tive for a few years after ground has been broken 
In the garden as in 
up from pasture; and, at a time when the Bota- 
nic Garden at Hull was in this condition, it de- 
