2IO INSECTS INJURIOUS TO VEGETABLES 



attack fruit exposed for drying. The large size of these beetles 

 and their habit of assembling in numbers render them at times 

 an object of much apprehension. About the District of Colum- 

 bia the beetles may be seen in April flying low, with a loud 

 humming sound like a bumblebee. The new generation begins 

 to appear toward the end of August, the date varying with 

 locality and season, and after they have fed for two or three 

 weeks they go into winter quarters. A single generation is 

 produced in a year. 



Remedies. — Hand methods are available remedies for the 

 beetles when they occur in abundance. The use of insecticides 

 on ripening fruit is practically out of the question. During the 

 heat of the day, particularly in bright sunlight, the beetles are 

 active, but in the shade when feeding they can readily be 

 captured by jarring them from the plants on which they occur 

 into bags or nets. Fortunately, the species is only intermittently 

 troublesome, and therefore it need not cause serious alarm. 



Cutworms and Other Caterpillars. — The fondness of cutworms 

 for young corn is proverbial, and rarely is a corn field entirely 

 exempt from the presence of these ancient foes of man. Sweet 

 corn is particularly affected by these ravagers, but as a rule, 

 owing to the later planting of corn, it does not suffer so 

 great injury as plants that are reset from forcing houses, such 

 as tomato, cabbage, and the like. Nearly all other field and 

 garden caterpillars, including the fall army worm and garden 

 webworm, with general feeding tendencies, will attack corn 

 when more preferred plants are lacking. 



The corn cutworm (Noctua c-nigrum Linn.) better known 

 as the spotted cutworm, is one of our commonest and most 

 destructive species, and resembles the variegated cutworm 

 treated on pages 53 and 54, being cosmopolitan, nearly om- 

 nivorous, a climbing species, and traveling in armies like the 

 army worm. The cutworm (fig. 134, b) is pale brown or gray, 

 sometimes whitish, with green or olive tints, and measures 



