Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 May 1895 — WHEAT IS IN DANGER [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WHEAT IS IN DANGER

HESSIAN FLY LAYS IT WASTE I.N MANY PLACES. Startling Object Lesson Is Presented on ’Change-Farmer* Bring in Grain Stalks Filled with the Larvae—Surprise to Chicago Brokers. Z Causes a Rise in Price. Samples of the growing winter wheat plant, literally alive with the larvae of the Hessian fly, were exhibited on 'Change in Chicago Thursday. The effect on even the.. most radical bear was impressive, while the bull had a fair chance to put in kn “I told you so.” The wheat exhibited was plucked from fields in Indiana by H. Kerim and William Danlin. of Delphi. Said Mr. Kerlin: “We feel it is simple justice to the farmer that the people who deal in the commodities may be given a chance to see the actual state the wheat is in. We have been traveling with a horse and carriage along the line of the Wabash Railway from Lafayette to Logansport, talking with the farmers and looking at the fields. Ask a farmer how ■ his wheat is and he will tell you that it is looking very bad. Ask him what the matter is and he will say: T guess it is the drought.’ In every such case on examining the stalks and roots they were found to contain from one to twenty of the Hessian fly larvae. “There was a good stand of wheat everywhere, but when once we became familiar with the fly germs we could tell a field affected as far as we could see it. The larvae were laid by the flies last fail. That is not an uncommon thing, but the dry 0 weather ever since has been particularly propitious to the perpetuity of the germs; The farmer is jnst finding out what the real cause of the trouble is. One feature is to be noted—namely: That the pest can spread no further because it is germinated only in the fall. That is to say, it cannot affect wheat in which it is

not already lodged. We have met and talked with farmers from Illinois and Ohio, and they all tell of the same Condition of affairs.” A Chicago paper says: Damage to winter wheat is conceded almost everywhere. The movement statistics favor holders except in the matter of clearances. Unusual movements of wheat are reported daily. One day it is a sale to Canadian millers in faee of a duty. The next day it is shipment of wheat to St. Louis, and the next local sales to Kansas-City millers. Western railroads have provided for this unnatural movement by making rates on wheat to be moved back West.

(Hessian fly. with a bit of wheat straw, showing the piace occupied by the “flaxseed” stage of the insect; a and b represent the larvae and pupa; ail eniarged.) CAUSE OF ALL THE TROUBLE.