Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1884-01-24
Pests Of the Farm.

1t is a great help in dealing with any
sort of trouble to understand its nature
and character. There is always some
fundamental pr nciPle at the bottom of
every problem which the farmer has to
solve, and if he can only understand this
principle and will go hack to it when he
has to contend with any difficulties aris-
ing from one of these questions, he can
generally make his own rules and find
his own remedies. In regard to the
question under consideration, for IN
stance, the fundamental principle of it
is this: That all sorts Of pai q ites upon
animals and vegetables, whether animal
or vegetable themselves, are simply
means for the destruction of diseased
and useless matter. Nature always
throws out and gets rid Of it's wastes,
and generally if not always by some
living agency or organism; SO that life
is supported by decay and death, and
the higher orr anisms become the prey
and food of lower class of creatures,
until finally all organic matter is re-
duced to inorganic, ultimate, and in-
offensive elements, by the very lowest
class of organized creatures. Thus an
animal or q plant becomes weakened
by disease, or by some accidental in ury,
and Immediately we find it infested with
insect pests, lice and other .yermin, or
by internal vegetable parasites, viii h
feed upon its diseased secretions.e and
unless the conditions b. VIII oh they are
supported and encouraged are changed
by proper remedies. these parasites soon
kill the animals or pants and quickly
reduce them to disorsanized matter.
This is the history so far as we know,
of nearly all more serious disorders
which affect animals and vegetables,
and we may we'll believe that as our
knowledge in this respect becomes larger
and more accurate, we may lind inst lis
principle the KEY to all diseases which
destroy org anized life.
The farmer who may doubt it may
find an example of the truth just now
in the vermin which. infest his weak,
poorly fed animals, and in the rot and
dc cav which destroys the potatoes in
his cellar. 1t is the weak, half-fed
starveling calf which swarms with lice,
and the thin sheep which suffer from
blood-sucking ticks, ard the ill-kept and
filthily housed fowls that are eaten alive
with fieas; so, too, it is the hide-bound
and never brushed COWS and horses
which are plagued with vermin ans
with skin diseases, all parasitic in their
character, the il-ventilated and foul
stables in which CHAMBERS, farcy, and
other infectious and contagious diseases
are rife, and the over corn-fed and foully
watered swine which become the prey
to cholera. 1t is precisely the same
with human beings, among whom dis
eases are sure TO follow those unwhole-
some and injurious conditions which
weaken and undermine the health.
There is lesson in allthis, not only
to farmers, hut all Others. And tho
point and moral oft is that we must
maintain 3 condition of robust heath in
and in our animals and our
crops and fruit trees by every possible
sanitary precaution, by the most scru-
pulous cleanliness in every way, by.
wholesome and adequate feeding. and
by protection from the injurious effects
of exposure to cold or damp.-M r
Times. 81 s. 49,