248 ANNUAL EEPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



This work is being carried on in the various States under definite 

 project agreements. These projects have been formally accepted by 

 33 States and are in accordance with the general memorandum of 

 understanding in force between these States and the United States 

 Department of Agriculture. 



An average of 57 specialists from the Bureau of Entomology has 

 been maintained in the field, these men being selected with a view to 

 their training, experience, and knowledge of field conditions in the 

 regions in which they are to serve. Their work consists essentially 

 in carrying out campaigns in the extension of knowledge of the 

 methods of fighting insects, covering as effectively as possible all the 

 important crops and domestic animals. These specialists give demon- 

 strations to groups of farmers, live-stock men, fruit growers, and 

 others in the preparation of spray mixtures, emulsions, and poisoned 

 baits, and in other methods of insect control. Wherever it is possible, 

 persons in the communities where demonstrations are being made are 

 induced to assist in the work in order that each community may have 

 one or more persons acquainted with the methods of assembling and 

 apjDlying insecticides. 



Seventeen special field agents have been employed to carry on ex- 

 tension work in the control of insects affecting cereal and forage 

 crops. The outstanding feature of this work has been an extensive 

 and successful campaign for the control of grasshoppers, which early 

 in the season promised to be extremely destructive in the upper 

 Mississippi Valley and in Montana. The first successful campaign 

 for the control of the " coulee cricket " in the Pacific Northwest was 

 carried on by two of these agents in Washington and Oregon this 

 summer. D,uring last fall a very successful campaign for the con- 

 trol of the Hessian fly was carried on in the middle western wheat 

 region, and considerable effort was directed this spring to the control 

 of the European corn borer, a newly introduced corn pest in New 

 England. 



Three special field agents and two entomological assistants are 

 carrying on extension work in the control of stored-product insects. 

 The work is being confined to the Gulf States and Georgia, with the 

 exception of the work being carried on in connection with the Quar- 

 termaster's Office for the port of New York. The work in the South- 

 ern States has been almost exclusively in the control of the black corn 

 weevil, a pest which is conservatively estimated as annually destroy- 

 ing 10 per cent of the stored corn in the cotton belt. The work with 

 the Quartermaster's Department in the port of New York has been 

 on the control of insects which destroy both food materials and sup- 

 plies held for over-seas shipment. 



Twelve special field agents are carrying on extension work in the 

 control of truck-crop insects. Owing to the nature of this work it 

 has been found necessary to depart from the regional standpoint and 

 place an agent more or less permanently in each State in which work 

 is undertaken, as these agents find it necessary to correlate their 

 work very closel}^ with that of- the county agent and the work becomes 

 more effective the longer the field agent remains in any given State. 

 This work last year was carried on in South Carolina, North Caro- 

 lina, Louisiana, Maryland, Texas, Connecticut, New York. Massachu- 

 setts, Maine, Wisconsin, California, and Washington. The work in 



