INSECTS INJURIOUS TO CORN. 129 



the common Striped Cucumber-beetle. The adults are 

 found in the fields from the latter part of July until the 

 corn-silk becomes brown and dry, and often later, feeding 

 upon the silk and pollen, thus doing more or less damage, 

 though slight when compared with that of the larva3. 

 Though feeding almost entirely upon corn, they have 

 occasionally been recorded as eating various weeds, clover, 

 beans, cucumber- and squash-vines, apples of which the 

 skin had been broken, cotton-flowers, pumpkins, and 

 various fungi. 



[Remedy. — See below.) 



The Southern Corn Root-worm or Twelve-spotted Diabro- 

 tica (Diabrofiva (hiodecempu)ictata Oliv.). 



This beetle is distinguished from the above by being 

 larger and having three transverse rows of four black 

 spots on the wing-covers. Its larva, which has very 

 similar habits and is very injurious, by eating the corn- 

 roots in the South, has not been knovrn to do so in the 

 North, but is everywhere exceedingly abundant. The 

 beetle is ]3robably best known as attacking squash-, melon-, 

 and cucumber-vines, of which it eats voraciously both 

 leaves and fruit, but has also been noticed on clover, 

 cabbage, cauliflower, beans, beets, hops, cotton, chrysan- 

 themums, and various fruit-trees. 



Remedy. — The remedy for both these pests is so simple 

 and effective that it would seem that no one ought to 

 suffer from their injury. As far as known, they have 

 never been injurious to corn after a j^revious crop of 

 wheat, rye, or barley, though the field may have been 

 infested before that, and a crop of corn is then safe for at 



