INJURIOUS INSECTS. 301 



That ail intelligent interest in applied entomology is growing in 

 our State is evinced by the hundreds of letters which were addressed 

 to me during the past year, on the subject of injurious and beneficial 

 insects, in most cases aceompained by well packed specimens and by 

 notes that indicated careful and correct observations. Some of these 

 letters were answered through the St. Louis Republic, the Rural World, 

 the Journal of Agriculture and other papers, but by far the greater 

 number required immediate attention and were answered personally. 

 Among the insects concerning which from one to twenty inquiries 

 were received, were the following: Meat flies, horn-flies, bot-flies, 

 katydid eggs, box-elder bug, peach-tree borers, cucumber-vine borers, 

 rhynoceros beetle, long-tailed ichneumon fly fthalessa lunatorj , galls 

 on willows, galls on blackberry stems, woolly aphis on apple branches, 

 the same on apple-tree roots, lilac stem borers, apple-tree pruner, 

 saddle back caterpillars, ambush bug fPhymata erosaj, Calopteron 

 reticulatuni, plum and other fruit-feeding curculios, grain pests, small 

 webworms on evergreens, bag worms, chinch bug, tarnished plant bug, 

 tent caterpillars, walking stick, oyster shell bark-louse, scurfy scale, 

 San Jose scale, apple, peach and cherry-tree borers, hickory borers^ 

 tussack moth, aphis on plum, aphis on melons and cucumbers, striped 

 leaf beetle, bark lice on elm and blackberry, buffalo bug, squash bug, 

 white ants in timber, peach tree scale, mole crickets, imbricated snout 

 beetle, rose slugs, corn-root aphis, bill bugs, wire worms, yellow 

 necked apple-tree caterpillar (Datana minestraj blister beetles, buffalo 

 tree-hopper and many others. These cover a wide and interesting 

 range of subjects and indicate in some measure the number and 

 diverse character of the insect enemies with which the Missouri farmer 

 and fruit-grower have to contend. 



The insect problem, with us, continues to be complicated by the 

 danger of natural immigration, or the unconscious introduction by 

 dealers in trees and plants, of insect pests from which we have hither- 

 to enjoyed immunity. We are liable, also, to the sudden development 

 in destructive numbers of insects indiginous upon our local flora which 

 in some inexplieale way, acquire the habit of feeding on cultivated 

 plants. Hundreds of such instances are on the records of economic 

 entomology. This acquired habit is often quite local, and if observed 

 in time may be stamped out, so to speak, and the widespread acquisi- 

 tion of new taste retarded, even if it cannot be ultimately prevented. 

 Along this line, the investigations carried on at the State Experiment 

 Stations should be especially directed and warnings widely published 

 against the weeds from whose especial insect inhabitants danger to 

 cultivated plants may be apprehended. As an illustration : There is 



