tlirough the stable, cart it out on a new lield, and plow it under, is 

 one that the farmer should evidently be careful to avoid. 



Exactly in tliis connection, an assistant, Mr. Charles N. Ainslie, 

 wliile waiting between trains in the city of St. Louis, Mo., found 

 at the corner of Sixteenth and Locust streets a pile of bricks to be 

 used in the erection of a building. These bricks were stamped ''Mas- 

 sillon, Ohio," and were packed in straw which the cliief contractor 

 stated came with the bricks from Ohio. This straw contained larvae 

 of this species which later on transformed to adults, but the latter 

 did not emerge from the strav\\ 



In the past it has alwaj^s been thought necessary, as a precautionary 

 measure, to burn the infested bits of hardened straw that break up 



in thrashing the wheat, many 

 ''^HWII'Mi b^i^g carried out with the 

 grain instead of going over in 

 the straw. Several experi- 

 ments in rearing adults from 

 large numbers of these broken 

 bits of straw (fig. 5), collected 

 about elevators and thrash- 

 ing machines, has shown that 

 almost all of the larvae of 

 both Isosoma and parasites 

 are killed, probably by the 

 concussion of the cylinder of 

 the thrasher. In some cases 

 we have been able to verify 

 these experiments by collec- 

 tions of stubble from fields 

 in the vicinity of these ele- 

 vators. So far as we have 

 gone into the investigation 

 everything indicates that the 

 danger from these broken bits of hardened straw, or even from the straw 

 itself, is of too little importance to be worth consideration. Prof. R. H. 

 Pettit, of the Michigan Agricultural College, and Mr. W. J. Phillips, of 

 this Bureau, in 1906, found in northern Indiana great numbers of 

 straws afi^ected by the joint-worm, where the enveloping sheath had 

 been torn away, the galls formed by the larvae deftly eaten away, and 

 the joint- worms missing. In no case was the entire gall gnawed away, 

 but just enough of the walls immediately over the larva to make pos- 

 sible the removal of the latter (fig. 6) . While we have not been able to 

 get definite information as to the identity of this decidedly beneficial 

 animal, suspicion seems to point to the short-tail shrew {Blarina 



[Cir. OG] 



h 



Fig. 6.— Wheat straws injured by the joint-worm 

 {Isosoma triiici), from which the joint-worms have 

 been removed by some beneficial animal, perhaps the 

 short-tail shrew (Blarina brevkauda). (Author's illus- 

 tration.) 



