Pests and Crops
When I asked the seed-merchant for a remedy for cabbage root-grub—dustings of lime or calomel are said to be effective— and remarked that it seemed an extraordinary year for pests, he replied with that sepulchral fatalism which countrymen seem to enjoy cxhibiting: " Yes, but there's a war on, and you will get pests. Always notice you get everything in the way o' pest when there's a war." Certainly, against all expectations, spring crops have been seriously threatened, both on farms and in gardens, by plagues of leather-jacket, flea-beetle, wire-worm, root-grub and caterpillar. It occurs to me that one reason for this may be that six weeks of intense frost seriously upset the balance of bird-life. In a winter when rabbits were forced to strip young ash-trees, roses, hales, and fruit-trees as bare as bone, the death-rate among all birds must have been extremely high. Throughout the spring there seems to have been fewer nests than usual, and the dawn orchestra, leading off as early as three-thirty with the cuckoos, has seemed scattered and thin. In spite of pests, however, the promise of crops is excellent. Cherry-farmers, and in fact all fruit growers, have welcomed a dry, warm May, in which blossom has set to perfection. Hop- farmers were pleased by a steady, rather backward spring. Cereal crops have shown no sign of the sickliness that follows a wet May. And to me it was a rare pleasure to meet in one day three farmers, one fruit, one hops, one mixed, who were for once serenely satisfied with the state of their world.
H. E. BATES.
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