1918 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 29 



Grapevine Flea-beetle. Common in what small acreages are grown. 

 Currant Saw-fly. Very common on currants and gooseberries that were 

 not sprayed with hellebore. 



Greenhouse Insects. 



'Considerable damage was done to tomatoes by eelworms (Nematodes). This 

 was effectively controlled in some cases where it has been bad in previous seasons 

 by the removal of the soil to a depth of about 8 inches. The general greenhouse 

 pests seem quite active this year including aphids and greenhouse white fly: 

 cucumber beetles doing considerable harm. Hydrocyanic gas was used for the 

 first time in a number of greenhouses for the control of white fly. 



Division No. 7, Niagara District — "W. A. Ross, Dominion Entomological 

 Laboratory, Vineland Station, Ont. 



In spring and early summer, the weather was abnormally wet. At A^ineland 

 the precipitation for April, May, June and July was 16.56 inches. 



Early in the season, due to the unfavourable meteorological conditions, there 

 was a paucity of insects; later on, however, they became quite abundant. An 

 unusually large number of insect outbreaks were reported to me. Some of the 

 outlireaks were real but many of them were imaginary. 



Insects Injurious to Field Crops. 



The Wheat Midge {Itonida tritici). On July 18th, I was called upon to 

 investigate what was supposed to be a serious outbreak of wheat midge in the 

 Niagara Peninsula. I found the pest generally distributed throughout Wetland 

 and Lincoln counties and I understand that it was also present in other parts 

 of the Peninsula. Here and there where the wheat was backward, the midge was 

 abundant, but on the whole, the infestation was very light. 



In tliree of the worst infested fields. I found by counting the plump and 

 shrunken berries that about 35 per cent, of the grain was more or less shrivelled. 

 In heads containing 1,357 kernels 1.001 maggots were found, the number of 

 larvae per infested kernel varying from 1 to 10. 



In a rearing cage in which infested wheat heads had been placed, one adult 

 midge emerged on August 10th. 



The Grain Aphis (Macrosiphum granar'mm). During the latter part of 

 July the grain-aphis came into prominence. It was very abundant on oats in 

 certain sections of this district and produced so much alarm among grain mer- 

 chants that, according to a St. Catharines dealer, the price of oats jumped ten 

 cents. I looked into this outbreak, and, as I expected, found that tlio reports 

 of serious losses being caused by the insect were without foundation. Natural 

 checks — hymenopterous parasites, ladybird beetles, syrphid larvae, Eniomophora 

 etc., as usual prevented any serious injury. 



The Oat Midge. The grain-aphis was succeeded by the oat-mids'e which, 

 according to report, was destroying all the oats in the neighbourhood of Port 

 Robinson. This depredator proved to be oat stamens. 



Thrips on Clover. The blood red larvae of Haplothrips statkes Hiil. were 

 decidedly abundant on the heads of alsike clover in the vicinity of Ridgeway, 

 but, so far as I could make out. they did not cause any appreciable injury to 

 the crop of seed. 



