JOURNAL 



OF 



ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 



OFFICIAL ORGAN AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGISTS 



Vol. 7 AUGUST, 1914 No. 4 



Proceedings of the Twenty-sixth Annual Meeting 

 of the American Association of Economic 



Entomologists 



{Continued) 



(Papers read by title.) 



SOIL FUMIGATION 



By J. A. Hyslop, Bureau of Entomology, U. S. Department of AgricnUiire 



Subterranean insects have always been the source of more or less 

 embarrassment to the entomologist engaged in field crop insect investi- 

 gations. In greenhouse management and truck crop growing very 

 efficient treatments have been devised, as the intensiA^e methods in 

 these branches of agriculture make possible and profitable methods 

 that, in field crop farming, are prohibited by cost and labor. Among 

 field crop pests, forms which complete their life cycles within one year 

 and which transform more or less uniformly and contemporaneously, 

 have been quite successfully combated by cultural methods. These 

 same methods are also being generally recommended for such forms 

 as wireworms {Elaterid larvae) and white grubs (Lachnosterna larvse) 

 which spend more than one season in the soil as larvae. These methods, 

 even though carried out most thoroughly, cannot, from the nature of 

 the life histories of these pests, be efficient in less than two years and 

 in the case of forms hke Melanotus spp.in which the larval stage extends 

 over three winters, three years of combative culture will be required 

 to rid a field of the pest. It is with this knowledge that such recom- 

 mendations are made, not because they are believed to be efficient 

 but because no better treatment has, as yet, been brought forward. 



In the following paragraphs will be outlined a radical departure 



