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The best of the early writings upon this subject are by Virginians. 

 At the beginning of the present century it was investigated by Mr. 

 Landon Carter, and later Mr. Edmund RufQn, a well-known writer 

 upon agricultural topics, and the man who first suggested the value of 

 marl as a fertilizer, ])aid some attention to this pest, and wrote several 

 very able articles upon its habits and the best measures to be taken 

 against it. Since the war the literature upon this insect has been de- 

 voted to a consideration of its habits as a corn i)est in the south, and 

 only recently have its injuries to the wheat crop of Virginia and Mary- 

 land become so serious as to attract general attention. Prof. Kiley 

 published a general article upon the species in his report as Ento- 

 mologist of the Department of Agriculture for 1884, and within the 

 last year Prof. E. W. Doran, late Entomologist of the Maryland Agri- 

 cultural Experiment Station, published a good account of the Insect 

 upon pages 437-441 of Bulletin 10 of the Station. 



The farmers of Virginia are particularly concerned with the damage 

 done by this insect to the wheat crop. Its habits need not to be dilated 

 upon, since they are doubtless familiar to all concerned in its treatment. 

 It may be stated briefly, however, that the parent insect is a small 

 gray moth or " candle fly, " resembling a clothes moth. This moth 

 lays its eggs only upon hard grain. The eggs hatch into small, whitish, 

 maggot-like caterpillars, which eat out the interior of the individual 

 grains, and when full grown spin delicate silk cocoons from which the 

 moths eventually issue. The insect passes the winter only in your 

 barns and storehouses. It will breed uninterruptedly, generation after 

 generation, in stored wheat. After the time of harvest the moth flies 

 out from the granaries to the wheat fields and will lay its eggs upon 

 grains of wheat in the shocks. The larva? are not destroyed in the 

 threshing and are carried back to the granaries again. From these 

 facts it is plain that if the granaries of a neighborhood are kept free 

 from the insect the shocks will not become infested in the fields. If an 

 individual farmer, however, takes the trouble to disinfect his granary, 

 his wheat shocks will be infested by moths flying from the barns of his 

 neighbors, provided he does not thresh very soon after harvest. In 

 such cases early threshing is very important. I realize the difficulty 

 which frequently occurs in getting the thresher at the proper tiuie, and 

 where the wheat must be left in the field the individual farmer must dis- 

 infect his granary every year soon after the wheat is put in. There is 

 an alternative, however, and it is a most desirable alternative, and upon 

 its i^ractice depends the diminution of the insect in numbers, if not its 

 practical extermination, in any given neighborhood. Let all of the 

 wheat growers of a neighborhood by concerted action disinfect their 

 granaries thoroughly for one or two years. It is plain that if this be 

 done all future damage will depend upon the importation of the insect 

 in cereal products from some other locality. This is a plan which it is 

 eminently fitting that a body of farmers like this should take into ear- 



