FARM NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1853, 27 May 1887, Page 7

FARM NOTES.

The Wireworm Scare. — A farmer writes to the Southland Times in the following strain on the child's play indulged in by the amateur experimentalists employed in connection with the so-called Agricultural department:—"Did ever anyone hear of such downright foolery ! Wireworm is an insect which preys on all plants, particularly wheat and is found in all land that has lain a long time in pasture, but instead of a curse (like the rabbits, small biids, &c.) has now proved a blessing ; so much so, that anyone having potatoes-, wheat., or any cereal attacked by the disease known as wireworm, has only to notify 'the Government to that effect, and

have the crops destroyed, tbey paying tenfold the value as compensation. lam sure that any farmer reading of the matter will be highly pleased, if not amused, at the easy way in which they can get rid of their infected crops', But putting all joking aside, I think this is going a little too far. If cnur money is to be squandered in this way, it is high time the Government were abolished. Until such abolition takes place let -.us send

up a practical farmer to see that no 1 more such jokes are played on our M.H.R/s." Extirpating * Rabbits. — Mr Robert Paterson writes to the Australasian that after long experience in extirpating rabtxitsv he is convinced the beat way is to dig them into their burrows, to cover, smoke, and destroy them. He places tin, or zinc, or iron round the burrow, to prevent any rabbits entering it from outside, and within 1 48 hours he has all the rabbits dead in a tomb of their own buiTowing — young ones, cunning ones, and all.

Mr Allbones on the Natural Enemies. — The Press has been interviewing; Mr Allbones, whose name is a household word on such matters, on the value of natural enemies a& exterminators of bunny, Mr Allbones spoke very highly of stoats and weasels, but just as disparagingly of ferrets', " You will get," he said, " nothing better for rabbits than stoats and weaselg. Every time they want a feed they kill a fresh rabbit, and when they're hunting, if they light- upon a nest of 10 young ones; they kill them all. They eat nothing dead,' not even a pigeon that dies itself, though they are very fond of pigeons. But they'll never come near buildings, and there's nothing to be feared from them, either for children or poultry. Its never been known of them to come neat buildings ; they're too wild, and you couldn't hunt them in, and they haven't any taste for poultry. I pulled a white stoat — that's a winter stoat — out of a stack on a farm in Lincolnshire, and the poultry used to be always feeding round that stack, but the stoat had been coming and going for a long while, and the farmer had never lost a single fowl." To an inquiry about the possibility of the vermin multiplying and being forced by overcrowding to look for sustenance down country, Mr Allbones replied : " There won't be any overcrowding with them. If there were, they're very soon trapped off iff you want to trap them off. But they don't; increase very fast. For one thing their life's but three years, for they wear out their pin teeth cracking the rabbit's skull. They strike just behind the ear, so as to cut the jugular vein, and their teeth strike the bone and wear away quickly, for they're a regular needle point. And then the young ones are six weeks before they- can see. No, they'll never get too plentiful. I know a place in Leicestershire where they've never killed one since they began. They keep a lot to kill the rats and rabbits, but the stoats never kill poultry ; and when they can't get rabbits they kill one another — aye, and eat one another, too. I've seen one stoat kill another and eat him all, and when you went to' pick him up there was nothing but the skin opened from end to end and stretched out flat. Keep them in boxes, and I've known them eat one another, all but the tail. Now the ferret's different. It was a ferret that bit that child I hear talk about down South. A ferret's good for nothing, won't stop out;, always comes back to the buildings, and when it's prowling about it'll eat any mortal thing. It wants handling every clay to keep it reasonable. And then it's more like a cat ; it's delicate, and must have shelter, so of course it comes to the homestead. You don't want ferrets, but you ought to get more stoats and weasels for rabbit-infested runs. They would keep the rabbits down. Mr Swailes, of Eawb} r , in Lincolnshire, had a stoat among his rabbits last year, and he had hardly a rabbit to shoot." " That was among burrows, Mr Allbones ; will they be as successful with the rabbits here, that nest in a tussock on the hillside ?" " That they will ; they're always travelling are stoats, and they'll calch a hare. The hare can never get away from them, though she runs through hedges, and they bite down through the ■top of the of the head till they kill her ; and they never take more than just the blood." " Hard weather kill them in theranges V " Not much. We get snow at Home that lies for weeks, and melts and freezes till it's all ice. But you don't find stoats and weasels the scarcer for it."