The Jasper Weekly Courier

The Striped Bug.—One of the remedies for the striped bug in melon and cucumber patches is recommended in the Philadelphia Farmer & Gardener. It consists in arranging the hatching of spring chickens as to bring out the brood about the time that the striped bugs appear, and then set one or more coops, according to the size of the melon patch, among the vines or hills, each coop containing a brood of small chickens freely running in and out of the coop, but keeping the dam carefully confined. These little chicks he found the most industrious and vigilant scavengers that he ever met with. Not a bug escapes them, whether they are on the vine or on the earth, and they pick them off so easy and daintily without doing the least injury to the melons, or even disturbing a single leaf. By the time that the brood of chicks get old enough to scratch, a younger brood can be substituted, and older ones removed.