Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year ...

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U.S. Government Printing Office, 1878 - Agriculture

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Page 174 - She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet.
Page 525 - Agriculture, the general designs and duties of which shall be to acquire and diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word, and to procure, propagate, and distribute among the people new and valuable seeds and plants.
Page 263 - ... shows it to have been under conditions favorable to its excessive multiplication. Insignificant individually but mighty collectively, locusts fall upon a country like a plague or a blight. The farmer plows and plants. He cultivates in hope, watching his growing grain, in graceful, wave-like motion wafted to and fro by the warm summer winds. The green begins to golden; the harvest is at hand. Joy lightens his labor as the fruit of past toil is about to be realized. The day breaks with a smiling...
Page 316 - The best means of protecting fruit and shade trees deserves separate consideration. Where the trunks are smooth and perpendicular they may be protected by whitewashing. The lime crumbles under the feet of the insects as they attempt to climb, and prevents their getting up. By their persistent efforts, however, they gradually wear off the lime and reach a higher point each day, so that the whitewashing must be often repeated.
Page 19 - Agriculture shall procure and preserve all information concerning agriculture which he can obtain by means of books and correspondence, and by practical and scientific experiments...
Page 299 - By digging pits or holes 3 or 4 feet deep, and then staking the two wings so that they converge toward them, large numbers may be secured in this way after the dew is off the ground, or they may be headed off when marching in a given direction. Much good can be accomplished by changing the position of the trap while the locusts are yet small and congregate in isolated or particular patches.
Page 279 - When about half-grown they seldom move at a greater rate than three yards a minute, even when at their greatest speed over a tolerably smooth and level road, and not halting to feed. They walk three-fourths this distance and hop the rest. Two consecutive hops are seldom taken, and any individual one may be run down and fatigued by obliging it to hop ten or twelve times without a rest.
Page 275 - ... d). While crowding its way out, the antennae and four front legs are held in much the same position as within the egg, the hind legs being generally stretched. But the members bend in every conceivable way and where several...
Page 302 - As we shall presently see, in considering the different available destructive agents, coal oil is the very best and cheapest that can be used against the locusts. It may be used in any of its cruder forms, and various contrivances have been employed to facilitate its practical application. The main idea embodied in these contrivances is that of a shallow receptacle of any convenient size (varying from about 3 feet square to about 8 or 10 by 2 or 3 feet), provided with high back and sides, either...
Page 62 - Its preparation, together with the weaving into lengths, forms the never-failing resource of that most humble, patient, and despised of created beings, the Hindoo widow, saved by law from the pile, but condemned by opinion and custom for the remainder of her days literally to sackcloth and ashes, and the lowest domestic drudgery in the very household where once, perhaps, her will was law.

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