23 
and of the hooks by means of which the injury is done, it was evident 
that the bulb-worm merely rakes and tears the tissues of the plant, 
and sucks the sap exuding. 
The roots of the wheat were still measurably fresh, in many cases, 
while the upper part of the stool was entirely dead, and it is not 
impossible that some of these plants would have rallied by throwing 
out suckers so that the field would still have yielded a partial crop. 
This was not, however, the opinion of the owner, and he had already 
partly plowed up the round with the intention of sowing it to oats. 
In other fields of this neighborhood, the damage varied from noth- , 
ing to about twenty-five per cent. ; and as nearly as could be gathered, 
according to date of sowing. Where the injury was partial, it appeared 
in spots and patches, not in any relation that could be detected to 
differences of soil or level. 
The field worst infested had been sown to Hulse wheat during the 
last week of August, and the first of September. The soil was a 
clay loam, five years from the forest, the surface flat and without 
drainage. In 1881, it had been sowed to clover and timothy, and 
ploughed up in the following spring (1882), when it was planted to 
corn, but failed of a stand. 
The owner of this field reported that the wheat had turned brown 
in patches late in October, and that before winter the whole area 
was as brown as when we saw it. The injury was consequently 
done in autumn. He had also noticed the same trouble, two years 
previously, in a field of wheat sown during the second week of Sep- 
tember, on black prairie soil, high and rolling. This grain did well 
throughout the winter, but began to fail in’ April, and was after- 
wards ploughed up and planted to corn. Worms precisely like 
those found by us, occurred then in the field, at the base of the 
stem, near the root. He also reported that they destroyed a field 
of winter rye for a neighbor at the same time. 
In none of these fields examined was there any evidence what- 
ever that any other insect had shared in the injury so clearly 
visible. On the contrary, it was certain that the Hessian fly, if 
present in the field at all, occurred in purely trivial numbers, as 
not a single specimen was seen during all the search for the wheat- 
bulb worm made by myself and two others in this field. 
In other parts of the State visited subsequently, the wheat-bulb 
worm was found from Mclean county to extreme Southern [llinois. 
Generally it was impossible to determine the amount of damage 
properly chargeable to this insect, since in Central Illinois the wheat 
fields had been greatly injured by freezing, and farther south the 
Hessian fiy existed in extraordinary numbers. 
Respecting the injury done by the second brood near Cuba, Mr. 
S. Harris wrote me, under date of June 1, that in the fields 
visited by me in spring, which had not been plowed up, about 
one-third of the stalks were infested with the larve of the second 
brood, sometimes two or three occurring in a stalk, so many heads 
being bhghted that the fields looked decidedly eray from a little 
