This was followed within the next few days by reports from Virginia 

 and Maryland, and soon afterward injury was recognized in other 

 States and Canada. During the previous season (1898), however, this 

 pest was present in some numbers in certain fields in Maryland and 

 was noticed on late peas in New Jersey. 



From present information it seems that this insect has l)een gener- 

 ally injurious during the years 1899 and 1900, although somewhat 

 locally in some States, from Nova Scotia south to North Carolina and 

 westward to Wisconsin. At the time of writing, the insect's occurrence 

 in destructive abundance has been noted, by correspondents of this 

 oftice, in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Ontario, Canada; Maine, 

 Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Penn- 

 sylvania, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, North 

 Carolina, Micliigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin.^ Injury to peas in 

 the State last mentioned was not noticed prior to 1900. 



EXTENT OP INJURY AND METHOD OF WORK. 



This pea louse during the first season of its abundance overran and 

 laid waste fields of peas from Nova Scotia and Maine to Virginia and 

 Maryland, in the last as well as in some neighboring States destroying 

 about 50 per cent of the annual output and doing similar injury the 

 following year, in spite of the vigorous efforts that were made to 

 control it. 



An estimate of the total loss for the year 1899 along the Atlantic 

 Coast States reached the sum of $8,000,000. During 1900 the loss 

 over the same area was placed as early as June 15 at $4,000,000. Sev- 

 eral cases of severe damage were reported in Maryland, in which 80 or 

 more per cent of the peas on farms of 500 or 600 acres were completely 

 destroyed. In short, the pea growers of the Atlantic region and 

 westward as far as Wisconsin suffered very severe losses, which gave 

 rise to the expression that this country had been visited by a veritable 

 scourge. 



The reasons why the species has l)ecome so conspicuous a pest are 

 threefold — First, because of its ravages to a crop hitherto little 

 troubled by insect attack, if we except the pea weevil, which has 

 always been present in gardens and fields for upwards of a century and 

 has come to be looked upon as a necessary evil ; second, because it is 

 a species never before noticed, so far as records go, as having been 

 destructive to peas in this country; third, because of the great di(li- 



1 Mr. Sanderson has also recorded the .species (assuming its identity with 

 N. pisi) as occurring in iSIinnesota and Nebraska. There is evidence tliat this 

 species was observed on crimson clover in Delaware as early as 1890, and has 

 perhaps been present along the Potomac River since, or prior to, ISSfi (Bui. No. 

 26, n. s., Div. Ent., U. S. Dept. Agr., pp. 58, 72). 



