﻿THE SOUTHERN CORN ROOTWORM, OR BUDWORM. 3 



sentative Burleson of that State, informed the writer that the larvae 

 begin to work on the roots of Johnson grass during the latter part 

 of July. The}' eat small holes under each joint, and by the latter 

 part of November the roots are dead, and the Johnson grass, as he 

 expressed it, "looks more like rotten sea grass than anything I can 

 compare it to." 1 This correspondent refers to their work on John- 

 son grass as being more beneficial than otherwise. 



FOOD OF THE BEETLES. 



The fully developed insect, or beetle (fig. 1, a), is a decidedly gen- 

 eral feeder, eating readily almost any cultivated plant. A list of 

 its food plants would be more interesting for what it did not include 

 and if given in full would be entirely out of place in a publication 

 of this character. Of grain and forage crops it has been observed to 

 feed on corn, wheat, oats, rye, barley, buckwheat (probably), alfalfa, 

 cowpea, soy bean, clover, timothy, milo maize, Kafir, pearl millet, 

 vetch, Johnson grass, and rape. 



DEPREDATIONS OF THE LARVAE IN CORN. 



Just when the southern corn rootworm, or budworm, as it is termed 

 in the South, first began to attack corn is involved in obscurity. The 

 writer several years ago x called attention to the fact that it was 

 probably this insect to which a Mr. Charles Yancey, 2 of Buckingham, 

 Va., referred when he described " a little white worm with copper- 

 colored head " which, perforating the stalks of young corn " just be- 

 low the surface of the ground," destroyed the growth. The budworm 

 has certainly been accused of attacking corn in Virginia and other 

 Southern Atlantic Coast States since long before the recollection of 

 the oldest inhabitants. Quaintance 3 found excellent ground for be- 

 lieving that the pest was injurious in the cornfields of Georgia " many 

 years before we find any reference to it in the literature of economic 

 entomology." The first exact observations on the ravages of the 

 larvae (fig. 1, c) in growing corn, the identity of the pest being known 

 at the time the observations were made, were by the writer and pub- 

 lished shortly afterwards, 4 as follows: 



While in the South during the spring of 1886 we frequently heard of fields 

 of young corn being seriously injured during some seasons by a small white 

 worm which attacked the roots, usually during April. * * * 



On April 12 of the present year [1887] we were enabled to solve the problem 

 by finding considerable numbers of these larvse in the field of corn in Tensas 

 Parish, La., where they were working considerable mischief by killing the young 



1 U. S. Dept. Agi\, Insect Life, vol. 4, p. 264. 1892. 



2 American Farmer, vol. 10, p. 3, 1828. 

 3 Loc. cit., p. 36. 



* Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for 1887, p. 14S, 1888. 



