of corn destroyed by them. They are attacking the wheat, eating off the blades and taking the kernels."-CUMBERLAND Co., in Prairie Farmer, June 13th. "The army worms are making havoc in this part of the State. Timothy and red top all eaten up, and some pieces of wheat are badly injured."-[I., Marion county, June 6th, in Prairie Farmer, June 13th. "Army-worms awful, but much of the wheat so far ahead as to be out of their reach. Meadows (timothy) used up."--[C., Marion county, June 5th, in Prairie Farmer, ibid. "We find the army-worm has appeared in some of the central counties of the State at various times during the last 26 or 27 years, and always first attacking the oldest meadows of timothy. * * # Near Clear Creek, about fifteen miles west of Jonesboro, on the American Bottom, the worm made its appearance about three weeks since, in the timothy meadows, stripping them completely of their foliage. One gentleman, a Mr. McClure, estimates his loss of that crop at $4,000. They have gone into the wheat fields and stripped the blades from much of that joining the grass, but the berry is entirely uninjured. * At South Pass the worm is reported as having attacked old timothy meadows and the corn to a considerable extent. * At Centralia we hunted a considerable time to find a single worm where the grass had been entirely destroyed; the ground was entirely covered with their droppings. Their injury was confined mostly to timothy, blue grass and corn. In Champaign county, we visited a piece of timothy on the farm of J. B. Phinney, where they were first seen some ten days before. We found every stalk of timothy entirely stripped of leaves and head. On one side of this was a field of wheat, in which they had advanced perhaps two rods; on another was a corn field, into which they had advanced four or five rows, when a deep furrow plowed across it had entirely stopped their progress."Editorial Correspondence Prairie Farmer, June 13th, in Prairie Farmer, June 20th. -* * "One of our large cattle feeders told me yesterday the armyworms were on his farm, and had used up his meadows and pas tures."-[B. S. P., Logan county, June 11th, in Prairie Farmer, ibid. "The army-worm has made its appearance in great numbers in this county. They are also near Monticello, Piatt county. Mead ows are being cut to prevent the worms cutting them."--[S. F. S., Macon county, June 11th, in Prairie Farmer, ibid. "Army-worms are pretty bad-will destroy some meadows entirely. In fact have already destroyed a good deal of corn, wheat and grass." [W. L. GIBBS, Macoupin county, June 8th, in Prairie Farmer, ibid. "Worms, of a species extremely destructive to grass, wheat, oats, rye, sugar cane and corn, are at this time devastating several fields in this neighborhood, and, in every instance, they first originated or appeared in a field of rye." (Identified as army-worms by editor Prairie Farmer.)-[F. BEATTY, Knox county, June 18, in Prairie Farmer, June 27. "One farmer hereabouts had a hundred acres of meadow taken by the army-worms; another two hundred, and another had sixty acres of corn totally destroyed."-[RYAN W., Champaign county, June 20, in Prairie Farmer, June 27. "The army-worms have commenced their depredations, and are making a clean sweep of the corn and grass as they go."-[C. COOPER, Washington county, June 22, in Prairie Farmer, ibid. "The ariny-worms injured the wheat some, and they also ruined the most of the meadows and some little corn."-[J. M. GLASCOE Milton, June 22, in Prairie Farmer, ibid. "Timothy and red-top meadows were nearly all ruined by the army-worms; ditching saved some of them."[CLARK SELLERS, Pike county, December 2, from Prairie Farmer. I obtained from Mr. C. T. Chase, at the State Fair, several specimens of army-worms, captured, as I was informed, in a timothy meadow, in Cook county, where they occurred in considerable abundance. The owner of the meadow informed Mr. Chase that he had noticed the same insect for a great number of years in the same situation, sometimes abundant and sometimes quite scarce. * * * "I first found the army-worms in a small piece of oats on a neighboring farm. They had then been there two days, and had mostly disappeared, having cut most of the grain from the stalk. On examining a field of oats of my own, I could find none on the outer edge, but the center had been pretty thoroughly cut, and not a worm to be seen. This was on ground plowed in September. In pieces of meadow, both timothy, blue grass and prairie adjoining, there was no show of the worm. In another piece of oats, with clover and timothy on two sides, they had only been through the center, and one side, which was in wheat, (spring) stripping the leaves from two or three acres. This was fall plowed ground. No appearance of the worm in the meadows. From these facts I conclude they were hatched from eggs laid on the growing oats and wheat."-[J. C. ALLEN, Stephenson county, November 27, from Prairie Farmer. Mr. Daniel Edgington, of Rock Island county, informs me that he noticed many worms, which, from his description, were probably army-worms, on the platform of the reaper while harvesting a field of wheat, in 1861. There was a piece of timothy a quarter of a mile off, the intervening ground being planted in corn. They were very abundant also in a timothy meadow, in the same neighborhood, belonging to Mr. Carpenter. Mr. Wm. Harold, of Rock Island county, noticed immense swarms of what were undoubtedly army-worms on a piece of ground plowed August 1, 1860, and seeded to wheat and timothy September 16, 1860. The west half of this piece of ground had been in oats the preceding year, the east half in barley, and both timothy and wheat grew much ranker on the barley stubble than on the oat stubble. He first noticed the army-worms June 14, 1861, and they had all disappeared by the 20th. Immediately south of this piece of wheat was a piece of old timothy. When he first noticed the worms, they were some of them on the edge of the old timothy adjoining the wheat, but most on that half of the wheat which had formerly been in barley. But very few were to be seen on the part which had formerly been in oats. The new timo thy was completely devoured down to the root, where the barley had been, but grew up afterwards. Mr. Harold himself thought that the worms must have bred in the wheat, but it seems far more likely that they bred in the adjoining piece of old timothy, and that they migrated thence into that portion of the piece of wheat where the young timothy grew so rank and fine. The night before they finally disappeared, there was heavy thunder, unaccompanied by rain. Mr. Harold also informs me that about seventeen years ago the same worms were found in profusion, both on blue-grass, red-top and wheat, on a farm not far from his own. He saw them himself cross the road, as they left that farm for the bluff. On the whole, it may be concluded, from a review of all the above considerations, that the army worm moth generally lays its eggs in tame grass, or on certain species of volunteer grass which occur in timbered countries; that it cannot lay its eggs on spring grain or corn, but that, under certain circumstances, it does lay its eggs on fall wheat and rye. If, therefore, every tame grass meadow in the State was burnt over this current winter, it must be evident that a very large percentage of these troublesome insects would be destroyed before they could hatch out, and a very large addition made to the aggregate wealth of Illinois. PRACTICAL PROOF. It will only be necessary, in conclusion, to re-state those cases where experience, the best of teachers, has shown that burning ground over destroys the eggs of the army-worm. First. Mr. Wellington Wood, of Gallatin county, was burning brush heaps near his timothy meadow, and by chance letting the fire get away from him, had one half of his meadow burned over, while the other half remained unburned. The latter portion was afterwards "completely taken" by the worm; the former had no worms at all on it, and was saved without much difficulty by ditching between it and the infected district.-[Essay on Insects Inju rious to Agriculture, Vol. 4, Trans. Ill. St. Ag. Soc., p. 357. 4 Second. In one field, last harvest, the straw was scattered over a small portion of the field and burnt. The same field was again planted in wheat, and this season (1861) was overrun by the armyworm, except the burnt district, which they left untouched.[CYRUS THOMAS, in Prairie Farmer. Third. At another place this spring, after the moth had made its appearance in a meadow, a portion of the meadow was burnt over by means of straw and dry grass. Soon afterwards the worms were latched out in abundance over every part of the meadow, except the burnt district-there none were to be seen.—[CYRUS THOMAS, in Prairie Farmer. Fourth. While I was attending the State Fair, I made the acquaintance of Mr. Rob. Dory, an intelligent fruit grower of St. Clair county, in the southern part of the State. Mr. Dory told me that he had for several years back been trying to persuade his neighbors to burn over their tame grass meadows every winter, not with any idea of destroying the eggs of the army-worm moth, but simply for the sake of facilitating the action of the scythe or mowing machine, the fire of course destroying the old "fuzz," which, as every mower knows, clogs up and dulls the edge of the scythe. This year he burnt his own meadow over, and persuaded one or two farmers in his neighborhood to do the same; and, just as I should have expected, THE BURNT MEADOWS HAD NO ARMY WORMS ON THEM, WHILE UNBURNT MEADOWS ALL AROUND THEM WERE BADLY INFESTED. Mr. Dory could not recollect the precise month when the burning took place, but he thinks it was February. At all events, he says it was BEFORE THE FROST WENT OUT OF THE GROUND, and he very judiciously recommends that the operation should not be delayed till a later period, for fear of injuring the crop. ROCK ISLAND, December 30, 1861. |