Oct. 2, 1920.] Agricultural Gazette of N.S.W. 715 



where many small, stunted, rejected plants had been left after the vigorous 

 plants had been planted out, discovered them to be full of small caterpillars 

 in all stages of development. As both potato and tomato crops are grown 

 side by side with tobacco, and as these plants also belong to the same great 

 natural order (Solanacece), the three crops would carry the caterpillar 

 through the season, furnishing a regular food supply for the grub of the first 

 broods, which often feed on the stems of the potatoes. 



How to Combat. 



It is not advisable to grow and keep bagged potatoes in the vicinity of the 

 tobacco fields, and the increase of the moths would be considerably checked 

 if all rejected and waste tobacco plants, potato stalks and toraato vines were 

 regularly cleaned up and burnt. The moths emerging from the drying 

 tobacco stalks would then have little suitable food upon which to lay their eggs. 



Spraying as carried out for the hawkmoths in the United States would not 

 have much effect upon these burrowing caterpillars. 



The Rutherglen Bug {Nysius vini(or). 



This omnivorous little plant-hug was found in many places upon the green 

 tobacco leaves, but not in sufficient numbers to be considered a pest. As 

 there are very few field crops of this kind that it does not attack at some time 

 or other, however, and as climatic conditions might arise conducive to its 

 appearance in such numbers as to be a very grave danger to tobacco-growers, 

 it is a pest well worth watching. Any waste land or rubbish on the adjacent 

 paddocks should be burnt over on the first appearance of these tiny silver- 

 brown bugs. 



The Green Leaf Jassid. 



In some parts of the tobacco fields these delicate green leaf- hoppers were 

 very numerous on the leaves' upper surface. The perfect insects are of the 

 usual slender, wedge-shaped form, broadly round on the front of the head, 

 with the wing covers reaching beyond the tip of the abdomen. This insect 

 measures 3^ mm. in length, and is of a uniform bright-green tint, which, 

 however, fades to a duller green, diffused with yellow, on the body and legs 

 after death. 



The Mottled-winged Tobacco Bug (Dicyphus f abaci). 

 In Dr. Howard's "Principal Insects Affecting the Tobacco Plant," re- 

 printed from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Year Book, 1898, there is 

 a description and wood-cut of a plant-bug known in the United States as 

 the " suck-fly " or " tobacco-bug." This insect had been originally described 

 by Uhler as a tomato pest under the name of Dicyphus minimus. Later it 

 extended its range into the tobacco plantations, where in any late or neglected 

 fields left over after the main crop had been cut, it did a considerable 

 amount of harm. Two distinct species of small green plant-bugs were found 

 in considerable numbers upon the underside of tobacco leaves at Tamworth^ 

 but as the damage caused by the thrip infestation overshadowed everything 

 else, it was difficult to determine the amount of damage caused to the leaf 

 by these plant-bugs. 



