REMEDIES. 



With the more careful and thorougli methods of cultivation in the 

 North, this insect will have no chance for its life. It will reach its max- 

 imum in localities like parts of South Carolina, where corn is simply 

 stripped for fodder in early August and the bare stalk with the ear 

 attached stands until after the cotton is picked, ginned, and siiipped, 

 and where even after the ears are harvested the stalks nvc seldom 

 burned. In Virginia, however, the conditions are nearly as favorable 

 for the continuous development of the insect. Where it is not intended 

 to follow corn with winter grain, the corn is cut in October and the butts 

 stand in the ground until the following spring, affoi'ding the larvae safe 

 places of hibernation. Even in i^lowing for another crop of corn in the 

 spring many of the old stalks ai'e not destroyed, but still remain stand- 

 ing through winter. Under these conditions there is no check what- 

 soever to the increase of the pest. Where winter grain follows corn, 

 the stalks are not thoroughly dragged off (they seem never to be sys- 

 tematically pulled as in some parts 

 of Maryland and other localities), 

 and even when dragged off and col- 

 lected they are not burned. 



Where, however, the old stalks 

 are systematically removed from 

 the field and burned after the har- 

 vest or during winter, or where a 

 constant rotation of crops is prac- 

 ticed, the corn stalk-borer will 

 never become a serious pest, and 

 the Virginia and South Carolina 

 farmers have it in their hands to 

 check it at any time bj' pursuing 

 these methods. 



Aside from corn, sugar cane, and 

 sorghum, this borer has onlj^ one 

 other food plant, so far as we 

 know. This is tlie gama grass, or 



sesame grass {Tripsacum dactyloides) , which grows very higli in swampy 

 ground. Farmers whose cornfields adjoin swampy ground will do well 

 to burn over this grass during the winter. Aside from these simple 

 remedies there is only one more point to be made, and that is, that 

 rotation of crops is reasonably efficient against this insect. Where the 

 custom of allowing stalks to remain in the field during the winter is 

 practiced, it naturally follows that corn following corn will be l)adly 

 damaged. Observations made by this office show that in 1891 the 

 average damage to crops planted upon land which was in corn the pre- 

 vious year was 25 per cent, while the average injury to corn planted 

 upon sod land was only 10 per cent, even where this land was reason- 

 ably close to former corn land. 



L. O. Howard, 



Approved : En fomologisf. 



Chas. W. Dabney, Jr., 



Acting Secretdrtj. 



Fig. 3. —The larger corn stalk-borer: a, female: h, 

 wiiiKs of male ; c, pupa— all somewhat enlarged. 



Washin(;t()N, D. C, August 13, lt<9f>. 



O 



