54 PIIIST AJS'NUAL EEPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



excessive multiplicatioa of this pest by the free use of this material. And 

 if we are ever to obtain the mastery of the " white-grub" of the May- 

 hug {Lachnostet'naf usoa Frohl.), so destructive often in grasslands, 

 it seems to me that it is to be accomplished by the use of gas-lime or 

 some very similar product. Experiment could only teach us the proper 

 method and time of its application. We can hardly hope to destroy 

 the pupse at the great depth at which they are buried, but it may be 

 operative against the young grubs during the first year of their exist- 

 ence. If it should be found that the very early conjunction of the 

 sexes of an allied species {Polyphylla variolosa), noticed on page 72, is 

 the general rule among the Lamellicornes, and, as I am inclined to 

 believe, from so extraordinary a development of the generative instinct, 

 that immediately after mating, the earthen ball to receive the Qgg de- 

 posit is shapen by the female and the eggs placed therein, before she 

 takes wing in search of food, then, if as soou as the beetles are seen 

 abroad, the lime be freely applied in as great strength as is consistent 

 with safety, and rain soon follows in sufficient quantity to dissolve out 

 and carry into the soil the poisonous sulphites, the egg-deposits lying 

 just underneath the surface will be reached and killed. If the female 

 requii'es to be abroad for awhile before she returns to lay her eggs, 

 then the lime meantime applied should serve to prevent their deposit, 

 for reasons given in subsequent pages. 



Useful for destroying hibernating insects. — Probably in a 

 large majority of cases where crops have been badly infested with in- 

 sects which are known to pass the winter in the earth for transforma- 

 tion or simple hibernation, and where the ground is to be prepared in 

 the spring for another crop, a liberal application of fresh gas-lime to 

 the soil at any time between the removal of the crop and near to the 

 time for again planting or sowing, Avill prove of great benefit. 



Useful upon infested crops plowed under. — Whenever a stand- 

 ing crop has become so infested as to render it advisable to turn it 

 under, if the plowing be followed by an application of gas-lime, the 

 insects which have escaped crushing or serious harm in the disturb- 

 ance of the soil, should be reached by the poison and their destruction 

 completed, while the danger of subsequent attack is greatly lessened. 

 In the many instances in which our economic entomologists have 

 recommended plowing under the infested crop, I would venture to 

 supplement this direction : follow with a liberal application of fresh gas- 

 lime, if it can be conveniently obtained, of perhaps a hundred bushels 

 to the acre. I believe that this would prov^ the best possible method 

 of arresting severe attacks of the two great clover pests, the clover- 

 seed midge {Cecidomyia legiiminicoln) and the clover-root borer {Hy- 

 lastes trifoUi), whenever they occur within easy reach of the gas-works 



