112 FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



They ate very greedily of the food furnished them, and having con- 

 sumed the pith of a stem, they would emerge, and quickly eat their 

 way through a round hole into another stem. They displayed remark- 

 able activity in their movements. I failed in my efforts to carry them 

 to maturity, through lack, doubtless, of a proper food-supply. 



The habits of this insect, as a borer, in its larval state, in the inte- 

 rior of growing plants, were first brought to notice in the Prairie Far- 

 mer, of Feb. 23d, 1867. 



Food-plants. 



"While many of our insects are confined to a single food-plant, and 

 by far the greater number have a very limited range, this insect feeds 

 on a large number of plants, differing greatly in character. In a notice 

 of it by Miss Emma A. Smith {loc. cit.), the following list of plants, 

 the stems of which it bores, is given : tomato, potato, spinach, wheat, 

 corn, dahlias, asters, lilies, spirgea, salvia, milk-weed, castor-bean, rhu- 

 barb, Chenopodium sp., peach twigs, currant twigs, cockle-bur {Xan- 

 thmm strurnarium), rag- weed {Ambrosia artemisicefoUa), and a variety 

 of hearts-ease (Polygonum). It also eats the fruit of the tomato and 

 strawberry, and bores into the cob of ears of corn as well as the stalk. 



Its Depredations. 



Among the records of its most serious injuries are the following : 

 In 1868, a potato field at Lacon, 111., was observed to have about every 

 tenth stem occupied by this borer.* 



In 1869, at Fox Creek, Mo., it was discovered boring into and ruin- 

 ing great numbers of peach " buds " and shoots.f 



In 1869 it was reported from Farmington, Conn., as doing great 

 damage to corn in that vicinity. J 



It 1871 it occurred within the straw of nearly all the wheat fields 

 in Wisconsin, A piece of two acres of early wheat near Madison was 

 entirely ruined by it. § 



In 1877, at Elmira, 111., fifteen acres of corn were destroyed by its 

 depredations. At Waterman, Illinois, serious injury was doue to many 

 fields of corn. At Athens, III, it thinned the corn on new lands and 

 in foul fields to a considerable extent, proving to be quite destructive.! 



In Connection with the above notices of the depredations of this in- 

 sect m Illinois, it is an interesting fact that the types of the American 

 species of this genus described by Guenee— five in number — were 

 specimens which had been collected in that State. 



* American Entomologist, i, p. 22. fib., p. 206. Jib., p. 252. 



ISecond Rept. Ins. III., p. 141. WSeventh Rept. Ins. HI., pp. 113, 221. 



