February, '21] fracker: pest reporting service 49 



serious as to result in complete destruction of certain crops, the damage 

 may be extensive before reports are received. 



The larger the state and the greater the variety of crops grown, the 

 more serious is this problem. Nevertheless it seems to be a custom in 

 entomological departments to rely on occasional or emergency calls from 

 the farmers and growers affected. The problem is solved to some extent 

 by the establishment of field stations with entomologists permanently 

 located in various parts of the state, but this is bei^ond the resources of 

 many departments and even when such stations can be established, as 

 they are now in Illinois, each of them has as large a field to cover as 

 two or three of the New England states combined. 



It was with the double purpose of being able to assist in the con- 

 trol of insect outbreaks proinptly and of securing adequate and per- 

 manent records which might at some future period help to solve the 

 problem of periodicity in insect outbreaks and the relation of weather 

 and climatic changes to these conditions, that the Wisconsin Department 

 of Agriculture began the establishment of a voluntary pest reporting service 

 this past season. Somewhat similar plans are in use, I believe, in New 

 York and Tennessee. While the results are adaptable both to immediate 

 use and permanent records, the present paper will be confined to the 

 methods employed and the nature of information secured, rather than to 

 the more practical results in the way of insect control during the 

 current season. 



Organization 



The methods employed in securing this information were based to 

 some extent on those of the Bureau of Crop Estimates, and the results 

 were in fact correlated with the state work of the latter organization. 

 The Bureau secures reports from the fift}^ or sixty counties on crop and 

 weather conditions each week. One of the questions asked each cor- 

 respondent is to name any insects or plant diseases which may be destroy- 

 ing or injuring crops in his vicinity. The reports are of course very brief 

 and entirely inadequate from the entomological standpoint, but are of 

 considerable assistance in determining the localities in which grass- 

 hoppers, and, in Wisconsin, the various potato insects are causing the 

 greatest injury. 



For the pest reporting service itself a list of probable reporters was 

 worked up from the membership of the principal agricultural associa- 

 tions, such as the grain growers, known as The Wisconsin Experiment 

 Association, the fruit growers and market gardeners in the horticultural 

 society, graduates of the agricultural college who had taken a course or 

 two in entomology, together with selected potato and tobacco growers, 

 lists of which are also available. It was felt that county agents were so 



