205 



frons Meig., the only one known to attack growing beans in this country, 

 would content itself in restricting this source of food supply for our 

 Canadian cousins. June 1 a lot of injured bean i)lants with a large 

 number of maggots were received from Tippecanoe County, Ind., while 

 on the following day another lot came from Van Wert County, in 

 western Ohio, where it was accused of working serious injuries in 

 the fields. Having never before received it or known of its occurrence, 

 this second lot was a good deal of the nature of a surprise. Adult 

 flies were reared from both consignments, appearing Jane 10 to 18. 

 Some of the plants seemed to have liardly gotten above the surfiice of 

 the ground, while others indicated by their size that the attack had 

 not begun until they had acquired several leaves. 



A threatened outbreak of the grain n,i)h\s {Siphonophora avence Fab.) 

 failed to materialize, except in a few localities. As in the past, when 

 this insect has been overabundant, the weather during May and early 

 June was cold and wet, far less favorable for the parasitic enemies of 

 the pest than for the latter, thus giving it the advantage of a more or 

 less unrestricted multiplication. This I believe to be the secret of the 

 occasional outbreaks of Siplionophora avemv. I was wholly unable to 

 keep them on young wheat plants growing in the insectary, after the 

 kernels began to harden in the wheatheads in the fields outside. They 

 simply will not stay on wlieat during midsummer. 



Until this year I had sui)posed that, in the Northern States at least, 

 we need have no fears of depredations from mole crickets {Gryllotalpa 

 horeaUs Burm.). But twice this season specimens have been sent me 

 from widely distant localities in Ohio, in one case accused of destroy- 

 ing growing vegetables and flowers, and in the other destroying pota- 

 toes in the field by gnawing the tubers, the former in Portage and the 

 latter in Delaware County. 



July of this year brought me another of several reminders that the 

 economic entomologist, or any others who delight in solving the mor- 

 phological problems connected with the insect fauna of our Western 

 swamp lands, will find ample material and no lack of opportunity for 

 enriching science, at least during the next two or three decades. From 

 the Alleghany Mountains (-o the Mississippi River, north of the Ohio, 

 a greater or less area of swamp land is each year underdraiued and 

 brought into cultivation, and as the natural flora is exterminated, the 

 insects which fed thereon, and notably the Rhynchophora, for the first 

 year at least, transfer their attention to the crops of the husbandman. 

 The swamp bill-bng {Sphenophorus ochreus Lee), which Prof. Forbes has 

 studied in Illinois and I in Indiana, is a good illustration.* In Wayne 

 County, Ohio, a field of this swamp land was underdrained last year, 

 and last January was plowed ; no farther cultivation being given it until 

 quite late spring, when it was prepared and planted to ca-bbage, about 



'' Sixteenth Eeport State Eutomologist of Illinois, pp. 58-74, Pis. i, ii, iii. Insect 

 Life, vol. ii, pp. 132-134, figs. 20, 21. 



