64 



NOTES ON A CORN CRAMBID. 



BY M. H. BECKWITH, NEWARK, DEL, 



[Secretary's abstract.] 



For three years the author had heard complaints in the southern counties of Dela- 

 ware of an insect called by the people a " Cutworm." This year at the Experiment 

 Farm at Dover many hills were destroyed by this insect which he had had an opportunity 

 to study. The land was in timothy last year and planted to corn the present season. 

 Large numbers of the larva? were found, sometimes thirty in a hill, working around the 

 outside ot the stalk below the surface of the ground in silken galleries, but not boring 

 into the heart of the stock. He had sent specimens of the moth which he reared to the 

 Department of Agriculture and it had been determined for him as Crambus caligino- 

 sellus. He had tried Paris green, but does not know with what effect. 



Mr. Smith had heard of a similar attack on corn in New Jesery. He advised the 

 farmers to put on a heavy dose of kainit just after plowing and had heard no more 

 complaints. 



Mr. Osborn suggested that if the insect works like Crambus exsiccatus plowing at 

 the right time will prove affective. 



Mr. Howard said that the insect was abundant in 1886 at Bennings, Md., and that 

 the only remedy which he was able to suggest at that time was plowing immediately 

 after harvest. 



Mr. Alwood doubted whether kainit would act as well as the refuse salt from meat- 

 packing establishments, which he had found to be a good cut-worm remedy if sowed before 

 planting. 



Mr. Smith recommended kainit because it is a fertilizer as well as an insecticide. 

 Mr. Alwood stated that kainit is a bad form of potash for tomatoes and potatoes, 

 Mr. Southwick said that his grandfather used to drop a salt herring into each corn 

 hill as a preventive against Cutworms. 



Mr. Beckwith said that he had applied a fertilizer and salt in Delaware for cabbage 

 and thus prevented Cutworms, as he proved by a check experiment. 



Mr. Alwood uses tobacco alsoin fertilizers as insecticides. 



NOTES or THE YEAR IN NEW JERSEY. 



BY JOHN B. SMITH, 



During the spring of 1890 the larva? of the Clover-leaf Beetle, Phytonomus 

 punctatus, appeared in great numbers and threatened to become seriously destructive. 

 A fungoid disease opportunely attacking them, the vast majority were killed off before 

 they were more than half-grown. Some few escaped, however, and the threat of injury 

 was repeated during the spring of 1891. The numbers were not so great, however, and 

 the fungus disease stepped in as before, destroying the larvae before they had done 

 serious injury. 



Complaints of twig blight in apple were made early in the season, and on investiga- 

 tion two coleopterous insects were found to be concerned in it. One of these, the larva 

 of Eupogonius tomentosus, bored through the centre of the new wood, or rather that 



