Paper Collars to Protect Plants from Cutworms
Cut strong paper into rectangles about 2½ x 5 inches. Wrap a paper loosely around the stem of growing tomato plants and other tender stems before packing the earth around them. Let the paper extend about an inch above the ground, but make it narrower if it covers the roots.
“Oh, how funny,” laughed Mary Frances, “for plants to wear paper collars.”
“They would cheat Mr. Cutworm out of several good meals,” said Billy. “It’s provoking to find plants cut off that way. You see, the worms do their villainous work at night!”
“Oh, do they live under ground all the time?”
“No, we learned in school that they are the larvæ, or young, of a certain night-flying moth. They live in the ground until they change into cocoons (or worms-in-cases), which they weave about themselves. Finally the cocoon comes out of the case as a moth. Here is a picture of the villain.”
“Ugh!” shuddered Mary Frances.
“Hello, here is the real thing,” exclaimed Billy as he kicked aside some earth.
“Oh, isn’t he ugly!” exclaimed Mary Frances.
“We’d never preserve him for his beauty,” agreed Billy. “Some farmers make poison bait for cutworms by mixing a little poison and molasses with bran or clover, and throw it on the ground at night when birds and chickens have gone to bed. They are careful to take it up early in the morning so that no other creature will get it by mistake.”
[CHAPTER XXV]
Birds as Plants’ Friends
“NOW, Feather Flop said—” began Mary Frances; “I mean, if Feather Flop had been in the garden there wouldn’t have been so many cutworms.”
“Mary Frances!” exclaimed Billy. “How ridiculous! You don’t seem to understand that that old rooster would have eaten up all the young plants himself!”
Mary Frances bit her lip to keep from laughing as she saw Feather Flop peeping around the tree in back of Billy.
“If that rooster were a robin or a wren it would be different,” went on Billy. “Just listen, Mary Frances!” pulling a paper out of his pocket.
“‘One robin has been known to feed his family five yards of worms a day.
“‘A chicka-dee will dispose of 5500 eggs of the canker-worm moth in one day.
“‘A flicker eats no less than 9000 ants a day.
“‘A pair of wrens have been seen to carry 100 insects to their young in an hour. They are especially fond of plant lice and cutworms.
“‘Little humming birds lick plant lice off foliage with lightning rapidity.
“‘The yellow-billed cuckoo eats hundreds of tent caterpillars in a day.
“‘Seed-eating birds destroy myriads of seeds of destructive weeds—actually eating hundreds of tons of seed.
“‘The Department of Agriculture of the United States estimates that the tree sparrow alone saves the American farmer $90,000,000 in a year by eating seeds of weeds.’”
“That isn’t the English sparrow,” laughingly interrupted Mary Frances.
“No,” replied Billy, “not so much can be said in its favor.”
“How do people know what the different birds eat?” asked Mary Frances. “Did someone watch to see what each different bird took for a meal?”
“No.” Billy referred to his clipping. “Scientists have examined the contents of the stomachs of the birds, and have learned what food each kind of bird uses. There was a time when people imagined that robins stole so many cherries and berries that it was a good deed to kill them. Now they have found that they destroy so many injurious insects that they do not begrudge them a few cherries. Besides, if mulberry trees are planted nearby, they will prefer their fruit to the cherries.”
“Oh, Billy,” cried Mary Frances, “isn’t it wonderful! Not only do birds help us by destroying harmful insects and seeds, but they help us by their beauty. I believe they are the most beautiful of living things! They could have helped us just as much, and have been as ugly as—cutworms.”
“Yes,” laughed Billy, “I believe that is so, but it takes a girl to think such things out. The most remarkable fact to me, however, is that without birds we would die of starvation. It has been estimated that if they were absent for one season alone, the United States would lose over $300,000,000, and if they disappeared entirely, agriculture and farming would be impossible within a few years.”
“Bees and birds,” commented Mary Frances softly, “keep us from starving. How wonderful it all seems. Why, Billy, it must have all been planned out when God made the world!”
“I have thought of that myself, Mary Frances,” said Billy; “it’s one of those thoughts a fellow doesn’t often speak out loud. I don’t know why.”
“Everybody ought to take care of birds,” went on Mary Frances. “Surely the reason they don’t, is because they do not understand how wonderfully they help us. Do you recall Miss Carey’s poem—‘An Order for a Picture’? I learned a part of it in my literature course last winter:
* * * * * * *
“‘Afraid to go home, sir; for one of us bore
A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs,
The other, a bird, held fast by the legs,
Not so big as a straw of wheat:
The berries we gave her she wouldn’t eat,
But cried and cried, till we held her bill,
So slim and shining, to keep her still.
“‘At last we stood at our mother’s knee.
* * * * * * *
You, sir, know
That you on the canvas are to repeat
Things that are fairest, things most sweet,
Woods and corn fields and mulberry-tree,
But, oh, that look of reproachful woe!
High as the heavens your name I’ll shout,
If you paint me the picture, and leave that out.’”
“I know just what that means,” said Billy, “for one day—only I’ve never told it, for I knew how it would grieve mother—I killed a little wren. I was quite a little chap and had no real intention of doing such a thing. I aimed a stone at the little thing, and down it came—dead.”
“Well, Billy, there’s this comfort,” said Mary Frances; “it didn’t suffer. That’s very different from injuring it and letting it live on in agony.”
“Yes,” said Billy, “you see I didn’t understand; boys don’t, I guess.”
“Birds and bees,” Mary Frances repeated, “keep us from starving. I suppose you know of many other beneficial animals or insects.”
“Oh, Billy, let’s have lots of birds in our garden!” she went on.
“Why, how?” asked Billy. “Perhaps we could put food out for them.”
“Yes, but I wasn’t thinking of that. I thought maybe we could put houses where they would build.”
“Of course,” replied Billy; “and we could keep a small bath tub full of water for them.”
“What fun!” exclaimed Mary Frances. “Billy, do you know how to build the right kind of houses for each different kind of bird?”
“No, I do not,” answered Billy; “I know of only a few. They are the ones our manual training teacher showed us. I have some pictures right here in my book. It’s queer I didn’t think of them!”
“Let me see,” cried Mary Frances. “Oh, Billy, will you make some later on?”
“I’m to make them in school next term,” explained Billy. “Mr. Carpenter, our teacher, told me about these houses one day when we were out walking. We happened to talk of what Professor Weed had told us in a lecture on birds, you see.”
“Do let me read about these houses,” begged Mary Frances, looking over his shoulder at the picture of—
Robins’ Sleeping Porch