Webworms.—If the destruc tion is the work of sod web worms, it is not advisable to plant the field a second time till late in May, on the 40th parallel, as the worms begin to pupate at that time. Web worms are easily distinguished from cutworms by being much smaller, about one-half inch long. They eat the young plants but usually do not cut them entirely off as do cutworms. Like the cut worms, they pass the days under clods near the base of the young plants. They are enclosed in a silken web, the web having small particles of earth attached.
Chinch bugs and grasshoppers often enter corn fields in great hordes from adjoining fields. When wheat is harvested, chinch bugs may enter adjoin ing corn-fields in sufficient numbers to destroy the corn crop. If the work is begun in time, they can be trapped successfully as they are about to enter the corn. A strip ten feet or more wide should be plowed, disked and harrowed into a dusty condi tion. Through this strip one or more dusty fur rows or ditches should be made by dragging a log back and forth. If well made, the dusty sides of the ditch will prevent the bugs from escaping, and the digging of holes at intervals in the ditch will cause them to be caught in large quantities in the holes. They can then be killed by pouring kerosene on them. Should a rain interfere with the preservation of the dusty trenches, a strip of coal tar can be substituted to prevent the bugs enter ing the corn. [See page 42.] If begun in time, grasshoppers can be prevented entering the corn by frequent use of wide catchers. These are drawn rapidly around the field or over adjoining meadow or stubble. Early morning is the best time. As the grasshoppers take wing, the canvas comes in contact with them and they fall into the pan. They can be caught in large quanti ties and furnish good food for poultry, especially turkeys. If used for this purpose, water, rather than kerosene, should be placed in the pan of the catcher.
Crows take warning readily and will not trouble a field for several days after a few of them have eaten grains of corn that have been soaked in a strychnine solution. Alcohol dissolves strychnine more readily than does water. The corn should be soaked in the strychnine solution for a day or two and placed about the field soon after the corn is planted and before the crows begin pulling up the young plants.
Corn smut (Ustilago :or) does some injury to almost every corn-field. It reduces the total yearly corn production of the United States by perhaps 2 per cent, or, in other words, reduces the in come from our farms twenty million dollars each year. Treatment of the seed is of no
avail. The brown or black spore clusters that form in huge masses on different parts of the corn plant contain millions of spores which do not affect other plants directly, but which carry the fungus through the winter and grow in manure or decaying vegetation, form ing other spores which start the disease in the next year's crop. They gain entrance at any point where the tissue is tender and growing, and especially oasily where the tissue is broken. The best known means of prevention is burning the infected plants and crop rota tion. Corn-stalk manure should not be applied in the spring to land that is to be planted with corn that season. (Fig. 625.) Remedies.—It is very fortunate that crop rotation and fall-plowing, two of the leading features of good soil treatment, should also be the best-known methods of preventing depredations from the most destructive corn pests. Depredations from cut worms, wehworms, corn root-worms, wireworms, the corn root-louse, stalk-borers, corn bill-bugs, and corn smut are prevented successfully by crop rotation and fall-plowing.
Maize-Growing for the Silo. [See also Silage.] The ensiling of cattle foods may be defined as the preservation of green or moist forage products by packing them in bulk in such a way that the subsequent heating shall expel the air and check the processes of decay, so that the forage will re main green and succulent and wholesome, and be practically unchanged after the first fermentation has run its course. The success of the process de pends partly on the fact that the heat of the initial fermentation is so great that many of the germs of decay are killed, and partly to the oxygen, which is entangled in the mass,.being replaced by the carbonic acid gas that is formed and that acts as a bar to farther changes.
The history of ensiling in Europe and America affords an excellent example of the evolution of agricultural methods. At times the practice has been subjected to sweeping condemnation and at other times it has suffered from over- zealous friends. The idea has been prominently before the agricultural world for twenty -five years, and ensiling may now be said to have become a settled practice in all dairy-farming, and to a less extent in beef- and sheep-feeding operations. Its highest development has been reached in those dairy com munities which lie in the northern part of the corn-belt.