TWENTY-FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. Vol 



fined to the emotions, the movements of the hands or arms are often modified or 

 accentuated by associated facial changes. These infuse life into the skeleton sign 

 and belong to the class of innate expressions. . . . Emotional expression in 

 the features of man is to be considered in reference to the fact that the special 

 senses either have their seat in or in close relation to the face, and that so largo a 

 number of nerves pass to it from the brain." He describes several instances where 

 complete conversation has been carried on by facial expression alone, showing the 

 possibilities of intellectual as well as of emotional expression of the face. 



Facial expression differs from sign language in that the latter, like oral speech, 

 has become conventional among tribes by whom it is extensively employed ; but the 

 former still bears its primitive graphic and representative relations to thought and 

 feeling. It pictures feeling, illustrates thought, and is, liherefore, the remivins of the 

 original, primitive sign language, which was pictographic. Sign language and its 

 analoge, facial expression, ''are so faithful to nature that they will endure, while 

 vocal speech will undergo many vicissitudes of development and retrogression." 

 Being among the earliest evolved expressional habits, facial expression will be 

 among the last to change, while oral speech and our sign language will become con- 

 ventionalized, and undergo many changes, so as to lose all resemblance to idio- 

 graphic signs. Facial expression is part of the natural sign language, and consists 

 largely of hereditary impulses left over from a primitive state. So the signs given 

 by the features, indicative of what is going on within the mind, are direct and 

 simple. Even children — babies — notice the expressions of the face, and judge of 

 the intentions of persons toward them. The power to read signs is of course an 

 hereditary instinct, just as the sign language of the face is hereditary. Both came 

 down from an epoch in the evolution of the race when articulate speech was unde- 

 veloped and even gesture language was unconventionalized. 



NOTES ON THE CORN-ROOT WORM. 



(Dtabroitca longicornis Say.) 

 BY S. J. HUNTEB, WAVEELY, KAS. 



This corn pest has been known in the State for 10 years. The following notes, 

 comprising my observations of this year on the workings of the pest in a single lo- 

 cality, reveal the very considerable damage which may be done by the pest. If the 

 corn-growing region of the State were generally so badly infested, the loss would be 

 enormous. 



My observations were made in the northeast corner of Anderson county. Th'w 

 pest was first noticed in the neighborhood three years ago, on a farm bordering on 

 Franklin county. Mr. Guard, the owner of the farm, stated that the insects have 

 been increasing each year, so that this year his corn will nofc average more than one- 

 third of a crop. One-half mile south of this farm there is a ridge of high prairie- 

 land four miles long, running enst and west. On the west end of this ridge Mr. Stid- 

 ham owns a farm* Mr. Stidham said he had not noticed the pest in his corn until 

 this year. About the middle of June the corn on 30 acres of his land stopped grow- 

 ing and began to turn lighter in color. Upon examination, he found a worm at work 

 at the roots, cutting each of the roots off at about two inches from the stalk. The 

 "bite," he said, in every case seemed to poison the rootlet so that a kind of tubercle 

 formed on the end, and no further growth took place from the rootlet. The worm 

 he described as white, very short and slender when young, but when grown it was 



