70 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



the midst of the Tensas swamps. Although the writer had been 

 famiHar with the beetle for years in the North, this was the first 

 time its food plant had ever been determined by him. With this 

 initial observation in mind, the same insect was afterwards observed 

 to attack the leaves of the cow-pea in great numbers. At that time 

 the two observations did not give any basis for assuming that the- 

 species would ever become a serious enemy of the bean and much 

 less so of the cow-pea, such as has since been recorded of it. 



In the same locality reports were received of peculiar injuries 

 to growing corn which had been observed by planters in previous 

 years. No definite information was just at the time obtainable 

 from this source, and it was not until later, when the writer stumbled, 

 as it were, upon the larvae of Diahrotica 12-pitnctata in considerable 

 numbers, attacking the growing corn in the fields, that anything 

 definite was known. With this limited knowledge, later observa- 

 tions seemed to be more easily made, with the result that a damage 

 of 75% was observed a week or ten days later in other corn fields. 



When Mr. Jas. A. Hyslop made his first observations on the 

 clover root curculio, Sitones hispidtihis, in April, 1909, there was 

 no indication that the species was of any particular economic 

 importance. It happened to be convenient for Mr. V. L. Wilder- 

 muth to continue the work taken up by Mr. Hyslop, because of 

 the latter's transfer to Pullman, Washington, so there was even 

 yet no information obtained that could be presented as an excuse 

 for spending much time upon it. However, the investigation was 

 carried through to completion, and in presenting the matter for 

 publication we found ourselves somewhat at a loss to give satis- 

 factory reasons for asking for the publication of the completed 

 work. The injuries of the larvae to the roots of clover were so in- 

 frequent, and the beetles themselves were not found in any great 

 abundance, so that the species could not be placed among those 

 particularly destructive to the clover plant. Five years later, 

 however, in 1914, the larva of the same insect were found to be 

 seriously destructive in alfalfa fields, attacking the alfalfa roots 

 in precisely the same way in which Mr. W'ildermuth had observed 

 them to attack the roots of clover. It now turns out that an ob- 

 scure, though serious trouble, in alfalfa fields which has, up to the. 

 present time, puzzled agronomists was really due to the subter- 



