14 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION CIRCULAR 101 



and G. A. Tumbleson, deputies, under the direction of Dr. L. Haseman, 

 chief inspector. The European Corn borer, a pest of European origin has 

 gained a foothold in Massachusetts and New York and is causing very 

 serious damage. Besides attacking corn it is also a pest of over 100 other 

 plants including many which are classed as nursery and green house plants. 

 Its favorite food plant however, is corn and should it gain a foothold in the 

 middle western states in the corn belt it would practically revolutionize ag- 

 ricutlure. Just recently this pest was found in Eastern Ontario, Canada and 

 a little later a large area in Western Ontario was found to be infested. 

 This brings it within a short distance of Detroit, Michigan and danger- 

 ously near the corn belt. In one field in Ontario it caused a commercial 

 loss of twenty or twenty-five percent and should it continue to spread down 

 into the corn growing states where the seasons are longer it would un- 

 doubtedly cause a much greater loss. This pest was probably brought to 

 the United States in 1909 on Hungarian broom corn and as a quantity of 

 this imported broom corn was shipped to and used in Missouri broom 

 factories it is possible that this destructive pest may already be present in 

 Missouri. One of the first acts of the Missouri Plant Inspection Service 

 in 1920 was to promulgate a quarantine prohibiting the shipping into Mis- 

 souri any plants or plant parts from the known infested areas in the east 

 upon which the pest might gain entrance. This was done in order to pre- 

 vent if possible any future introduction of the European Corn borer into 

 Missouri. In addition to this a large amount of inspection work was 

 and is being done especially in the vicinity of broom factories. If the 

 European Corn borer has already found its way into Missouri, which is not 

 at all improbable, it is necessary that it be found and eradicated as quickly 

 as possible. As some of the broom corn imported from Hungary was 

 used by Missouri broom factories in 1909-10 one of the first things that the 

 Plant Inspection Service did was to locate and get in touch with these 

 broom factories and later an inspector was sent to each factory and a 

 thorough inspection was made of corn fields and especially sweet corn 

 fields, in the vicinity of the factories. Also some inspection work was done 

 in the vicinity of some Corn Cob Pipe factories. The corn-cob pipe fac- 

 tories obtain corn cobs from widely separated communities in the state and 

 it was not at all unlikely that the pest might be brought to the factory in 

 corn cobs and later escape to the corn fields near the factory. For this 

 reason inspections were made in some of the communities near pipe fac- 

 tories. 



Inspections were made at the following places: Jefferson City, Wash- 

 ington, St. Charles, St. Louis, Ste. Genevieve, Bland, Windsor, Canton, and 

 Chillicothe. 



At the above named places thorough inspections were made in many 

 cases requiring several days. Whenever possible the inspector called upon 

 the proprietor or manager of the broom factory and in every case the broom 

 factory officials were more than glad to do everything in their power to 

 help in the work. Besides the inspection work done at the above named 

 places many corn fields were inspected in other parts of the state at different 

 times during the summer. 



At no place was the European Corn borer found and the Missouri In- 



