October, '22] campbell: blapstinus and bell peppers 363 



oats .4%. Likewise accumulated egg counts made from a constant 

 number of plants (Table 4) show that wheat received 73.4%, barley 

 11.8%, rye 14.5% and oats .3%,. 



Resultant larval infestation from the fall oviposition of the Hessian 

 fly on wheat, barley, rye, and oats was primarily manifest in wheat and 

 barley. Rye, though second in selection for oviposition, was scantly 

 infested and oats not at all. The percentages of plants infested from 

 these two series of plots (Tables 2 and 5) were for wheat 96 and 98, for 

 barley 64 and 62, and for rye 6 and 8 respectively. 



INJURY TO BELL PEPPERS BY BLAPSTINUS CORONADEN- 

 SIS' BLAISD. AND B. DILATATUS' 

 By Roy E. Campbell, Scientific Assistant, 

 Truck Crop Insect Investigations, Bureau of Entomology, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture 



During the first week of September, 1921, the writer's attention was 

 called to some fields of young bell peppers near La Habra, Calif., which 

 examination showed were being damaged by tenebrionid beetles feeding 

 on the stems at the surface of the ground. It was evident that individual 

 beetles did not do much feeding at one time, but because of their numbers 

 around many plants and their continuous feeding, serious damage had 

 resulted. This injury varied from a hole or two into the epidermis to 

 the complete girdling of the stem for an inch or more. In severe cases, 

 although the plant continued to grow for some time, it soon broke off 

 because of the weakened stem. In other cases, when the process of 

 feeding was slow, the wound healed over and the plant recovered. The 

 more seriously infested part of the fields suffered a damage in killed 

 plants of at least 25 per cent, but the average for the entire fields would 

 not be over 5 per cent. Many more plants were injured, but were not 

 killed. 



The field most seriously damaged had been cultivated for 5 years. 

 Opposite was a young lemon orchard separated by a dirt farm road 

 which had not been plowed for several years. The greatest damage 

 was to the rows near this old road. The soil was a rather heavy clay 

 loam, the elevation about 500 feet, in the edge of a range of foothills. 

 About half a mile away, near the top of a hill, 100 feet higher, was 

 another field similarly but not so seriously damaged. Various counts 

 indicated a maximum number of 75 beetles around the stem of a single 



'Identifications by Dr. F. E. Blaisdell. 



