NOTES ON VARIOUS TRUCK-CROP INSECTS. 89 
accumulated in regard to the habits of this insect which are worthy 
of record. 
During 1907 Mr. F. D. Hopkins, while engaged in the Bureau of 
Plant Industry, collected some infested stems of cultivated Physalis 
- of an unknown species, supposed to be a hybrid, grown at the Arling- 
ton Experimental Farm, at Rosslyn, Va. The stems submitted to the 
writer, October 30, contained at that late date one larva and three 
pupe. Mr. Hopkins had noticed for some time a peculiar injury — 
the breaking of many stalks fully three-fourths of an inch thick—and 
attributed it, with good reason, to the inroads of the larva of this 
weevil. The complete rupture of the stalks was brought about by 
severe winds which were encountered on three different days in October. 
This is apparently the first record of injury by this species in the 
vicinity of the District of Columbia. It also shows that the insect can 
be much later in maturing than is generally supposed, the larve and 
pup being found much later than is usual. The first adult from this 
lot did not develop until November 25. The pupe obtained wintered 
over as such but died during a very severe and unseasonable hot spell, 
when the insectary was not properly screened, in the latter days of 
March. Normally, they would not have developed for a month or 
two later. It has been quite generally stated by all writers on this 
species, as has been said in the article quoted, that all beetles mature 
by September and that hibernation is therefore always as a beetle, the 
knowledge of this fact being of great value in the control of the 
species. 
During July, 1908, Hon. John H. Rothermel wrote of injury by 
this species in the vicinity of Reading, Pa., stating that it was eating 
into potato stalks and killing them. The same month Mr. Walter W. 
Jacobs complained that the potato crop in Delaware County, Pa., 
_ was infested with this species, which he accurately described working 
in the center of the stalk, eating its way from the roots upward. 
In an earlier year Mr. F. C. Pratt observed this species attacking 
eggplant at Four-Mile Run, Virginia, about 30 per cent of a field 
being found injured by July 29. His notes are as follows: 
The larva was iound in one plant examined and plants averaging 2 feet high were 
affected, some bearing fruit. After they were attacked the plants withered away and 
died. The owner of the truck farm stated that for three years his eggplant had died 
in the same manner and he had attributed the loss to the soil, the plants being grown 
at that time on low ground thought to be ‘‘sour.’’ Each year he changed the location, 
‘but the same conditions had prevailed. 
A cocoon of a parasite was observed at that time in the burrows 
of the insect in eggplant and later the chalcidid parasite Ewrytoma 
tylodermatis Ashm. was reared from stems of Solanum carolinense 
infested by this species and collected by the writer in the District 
of Columbia. 
