Poetry · Chapter
Potato Bug Exterminators explained
A humorous and didactic poem describing the use of peafowl to control potato bug infestations in North Oxford during the summer of 1883, contrasting natural pest control with chemical methods like Paris green.
What happens
A humorous and didactic poem describing the use of peafowl to control potato bug infestations in North Oxford during the summer of 1883, contrasting natural pest control with chemical methods like Paris green.
Themes in this chapter
Agriculture and Rural Economy
The poem focuses on a practical agricultural problem—potato bug infestation—and promotes a natural, economical solution using peafowl.
Nature and the Environment
The poem advocates for working with nature (peafowl as pest control) rather than relying on chemical poisons like Paris green.
Moral Lessons and Domestic Virtue
The poem imparts a moral lesson about heeding useful advice and observing nature's laws for practical benefit.
Key passages
“During the summer of 1883 we were walking along past a large field of potatoes in North Oxford, where we beheld the strange spectacle of a pair of bipeds drilling their offspring to march up one potato row and down the other, so as to annihilate the enemy, who had assembled in vast armies, dressed in yellow garments”
In the summer of 1883, the narrator saw a family of peafowl methodically walking through potato rows to eat the yellow Colorado potato beetles.
Describes the scene of peafowl being used as natural pest control.
“It appears that the foe, or their progenitors, had been citizens of Colorado in the far West. And that, having conquered all before them, they sought another World to conquer here.”
The potato bugs originally came from Colorado and spread eastward, devastating crops as they went.
Explains the origin of the potato beetle as an invasive species.
“There’s no more need of Paris green For they will keep potatoes clean.”
Peafowl eliminate the need for toxic Paris green insecticide because they keep the potato plants free of bugs.
Promotes peafowl as a safer alternative to chemical pesticides.