406 INSECT PESTS OF FARM, GARDEN AND ORCHARD 



may be found feeding together until September or October. 

 In southern Missouri Professor Stcdman states that there arc; 

 three generations, while in northern Missouri only two, but the 

 exact number has not been carefully determined. 



Control. This is an exceedingly difficult insect to control, 

 owing to the large number of food-plants and the fact that the 

 adult takes wing and flies off quickly upon the least disturbance. 

 As it sucks its food, arsenical insecticides are of course useless, 

 and some contact insecticide must be used with which the insect 

 may be hit. The nymphs may be sprayed at any time, but to 

 hit the adult bugs they must be sprayed in early morning, while 

 still sluggish. Spraying will be profitable where the nymphs 

 are abundant, but it is doubtful whether it will be found a satis- 

 factory means of combating the adults. Ten per cent kerosene 

 emulsion and tobacco extracts have been used successfully. 

 Where they are abundant the adults may be collected in consider- 

 able numbers by sweeping the foliage in early morning with a 

 strong insect net and then dropping them into kerosene. Clean 

 culture, including the destruction of all weeds, and such vegeta- 

 tion or trash as may furnish hibernating quarters, are important, 

 as it is observed that injury is always worse where weeds have 

 been allowed to multiply and the ground has been covered with 

 weeds and trash. 



The term garden webworm is possibly a misnomer, for although 

 these little caterpillars frequently do more or less injury to various 

 garden crops when they become overabundant and migrate to 

 them from the weeds on which they normally feed, and occasionally 

 do some damage to sugar beets, they are best known as a pest of 

 corn and cotton. Though the species occurs throughout the 

 United States and south to South America, it has been most 

 injurious from Nebraska southward and east to Mississippi and 



* Loxostege similalis Gn. Family Pyraustidce. See C. V. Riley, Report 

 U. S. Comm. Agr. for 1885, p. 265; Sanderson, Bulletin 57, Bureau of Ento- 

 mology, U. S. Dept. Agr., p. 11. 



