Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1906 — FIGHTING INSECTS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FIGHTING INSECTS.

801 l Preparation Is a Very Important Means Open to AU. Soil preparation is one of the legitimate ways of fighting insects. There is not a reputable stockman in the country who does not understand the worthlessness of a stunted pig, calf, colt or lamb, and who is not aware of the necessity of keeping a young animal in a vigorous, growing condition from its birth. If this is essential with animals it is equally so with cultivated plants. It is the stunted or starved plant that is more often the prey of insects, though it cannot ba said that this holds good in all cases. However, a field of young grain in a healthy growing condition will sustain without material injury an attack that a less vigorous one would not. So far as plants are concerned, it matters little whether a soil is lacking in fertility or whether this fertility is present and beyond reach. There is sufficient nutriment in a healthy seed to enable it to throw a shoot upward to light and air and rootlets downward to draw from the soil. But suppose these rootlets go about among solid clods begging, as it were, for food. Stunted plants are no more profitable than stunted animals. A Comparison. Take two fields of equal fertility of soil. One is plowed a considerable time before seeding and is harrowed and worked oKer until a thoroughly pulverized, compact seed bed is formed. Seed placed in this ground will begin to draw from it as soon as the rootlets enter it, and the plant above ground will be full of vigor. If the first shoot is destroyed by the Hessian fly the result is only to stimulate the throwing up of tillers, and the soil will sustain them. Grain sown late in such a field will soon get sufficient root growth to enable the tillers to withstand the winter. * Now, take a second field Indifferently plowed and the surface smoothed over by a single harrowing that has only rattled a little loose soli down into the spaces between the clods. A rootlet starts out to feed the plant, but goes begging. The single shoot thrown up Is destroyed by the Hessian fly, and the root is unable to find food enough among the clods to sustain tillers, so fio tillers are up, and the crop is seriously injured by what in the other case resulted rather beneficially than otherwise.—D. A. Brodie. Snsaeatlona For Culverts. Where flat stones are at hand the best culvert that can be made is shown in Fig. 1. It is often necessary, however, to bridge a stream across which a single flat stone will not reach. The plan shown In Fig. 2 can then be used to advantage. ’'This Is really

an arch and can be extended even farther than shown. The only point to be observed carefully is that the side stones should all be broad and that enough earth is placed above them to hold them all In place when the weight of the team Is at the center of th*

span. Fig. 1 needs but little earth. Fig. 2 needs a heavy ballast of earth, concludes a correspondent who .makes these suggestions in American Agriculturist. Advertise in The Democrat.

CULVERT FOR SMALL STREAM.

SMALL ARCH CULVERT.