February, '16] AINSLIE- CRAIMBID NOTES 115 



Mr. C. L. Metcalf: I wonder if Mr. Bilsing would care to tell 

 us his method of keeping track of the females in order to find how 

 many. twigs they girdled. 



yin. S. W. Bilsing: My work along that hne has not been very 

 satisfactory. The first season I tried to keep track of these beetles 

 by marking them with red and black ink on the wing covers. This 

 was rather unsatisfactory. In order to determine the number of eggs 

 deposited and the number of twigs girdled the past season, I followed 

 up the plan of caging up some 40 insects in small cages in order to take 

 complete notes of them. I found that the data collected in this way 

 agreed in general with that collected in outside conditions. 



Mr. C. L. Metcalf: Are the results on your chart all from 

 laboratory tests? 



Mr. S. W. Bilsing: Yes, all the data on my chart are laboratory 

 tests. 



President Glenn W. Herrick: I will now call for a paper by 

 Mr. George G. Ainslie. 



NOTES ON CRAMBIDS^ 



By Geo. G. Ainslie, Entomological Assistant, Cereal and Forage Insect 

 Investigations, Bureau of Entomology, U. S. Dept. Agriculture 



The CrambidsB hold much the same position economically as cut- 

 worms, j assids and aphids. Like the poor they are always with us, and, 

 though the injury they do is usually clandestine and unobserved, it 

 is none the less real. Everyone interested im insects is familiar with 

 the small w^hitish moths which in almost every locality, at some season 

 of the year, swarm so thickly in the grass, but the larvse of these same 

 moths are so successful in conceahng themselves that even some ento- 

 mologists with considerable field experience are unacquainted with 

 them. Very little has been published concerning their habits or from 

 an economic standpoint. We are convinced, how^ever, from our field 

 work in Tennessee and neighboring states, as w^ell as from material 

 and reports of damage received from field men of the Bureau in other 

 parts of the country, that the various species belonging to this family 

 cause widespread damage every year. Two years ago we undertook 

 an extended study of the group and it is with the hope of stimulating 

 interest in these insects and obtaining records from a wilder area that 

 these brief notes are presented. 



In his catalog in 1902, Dr. Dyar records 79 species of the subfamily 

 Crambinse from North America. Since then several new species have 

 been described, so the number now recorded from North America is 



1 Published by permission of the Secretary of Agriculture. 



