April, '16] HARNED: PINK BOLL WORM 297 



"We are in the midst of a bad fix in our neighborhood. There is a small pink 

 worm eating the corn. It appears in the end of the ear and eats back as it goes. 

 It does not take long to ruin the ear. " 



"We have discovered a small red worm that is destroying the corn. They begin 

 in the grain next to the cob and eat the kernel up." 



"They enter the grain at the little end next to the cob and eat the grain up. Some 

 farmers report that cribs of corn have been destroyed. Investigations show that 

 they are in all cribs of corn. . . ." 



"They appear to be worse in damaged corn but are found in sound corn." 



"I find a small pink worm in nearly every grain. They seem to work from tip 

 to butt." 



". . . is eating up the corn in this section after it has been harvested and put 

 into the crib." 



"Practically all the corn in this section is infested more or less." 



" They have eaten some of the corn entirely up. They are very common throughout 

 this county." 



". . . is eating everybodies' corn in this country. " 



"Every crib in this community is infested." 



". . . is eating up the corn here after it is cribbed. They are in all the cribs 

 here. One man told me he had 500 bushels and would take $5.00 for it. " 



"In the fifty years I have been farming I have never (before; found these worms 

 in corn. They are general throughout this section." 



Although the small pink corn worm has apparently never before 

 attracted as much attention as it has recently in Mississippi it has 

 probably long been a pest of minor importance but usually mistaken 

 for some other insect. Walsingham ' described this species in 1882 

 from specimens "bred from rotten cotton-bolls." Chittenden ^ gives 

 us the first record of it as a corn insect. In 1897 he reared moths from 

 larvse both in cotton-bolls and in corn from the field sent from Texas 

 by Mr. E. A. Schwarz. Chittenden also brings out the fact that this 

 is the insect mentioned by Townend Glover in 1855, 1856, and 1877 

 as occurring in the corn fields of the South and as attacking corn in 

 the husk. He gives it the name of " Glover's grain moth" and quotes 

 Glover as stating "that the larvse 'appear to attack corn out of the 

 field as well as in,' and that the insect lives in injured cotton bolls." 

 In 1909 Swezey ^ shows that in Hawaii they have quite general feeding 

 habits. Among other things he says: "Once I found them very 

 numerous in sweet corn ears, feeding on the silks, inner husks, pith, 

 and other parts of the cob. I have also seen them in ears of field 

 corn, eating into the kernels of corn and into the cob." In 1911 

 Tucker * records these larvse as feeding in old corn stalks in Louisiana, 

 especially rotting, rain-soaked stalks. He also frequently found this 



1 Trans. Am. Ent. Soc, X, p. 19S. 



2 Bui. 8 n. s., Div. of Ent., U. S. D. A., p. 33. 



' Hawaiian Sugar Planters Sta., Div. Ent. Bui. 6. 

 * Canadian Entomologist, XLIII, p. 28. 



