﻿10 BULLETIN 5, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



As far back in the past as 1888 the author found larva? of a click- 

 beetle. Dasterius elegans Fab., a close relative of the wireworms, 7 " 

 under circumstances that led him to suspect that they were feeding 

 on the budworm. Since that time, also, they have been taken in 

 association with the larvae of this species and, though never observed 

 in the act, it is not at all unlikely that they do feed upon and destroy 

 the budworm. Mr. Ainslie also encountered them associated with 

 the budworm in his investigations of the latter at Hurricane, Tenn. 



REMEDIAL AND PREVENTIVE MEASURES. 



After having made its way into the crown of the young corn plant 

 there is no remedy for the work of the pest. The shoot is ruined past 

 all recovery, and the plant will only throw up worthless " suckers," 



which produce no ears and scant fodder. 

 Fertility of the soil, or the lack of this, 

 does not appear to have any influence on 

 the amount of damage produced. 



Garman x states that of the seriously 

 ravaged fields of corn examined by him 

 one had been grown to tobacco and an- 

 other to oats the previous year, while 

 a third had been devoted to corn. The 

 ravaged fields observed in Louisiana and 

 Arkansas by the author had all been de- 

 fig. 2. — ceiatona diabrotic<B, a voted to cotton the previous year. It 

 fly parasite of the southern wou \ft appear, therefore, that crop rota- 



corn rootworm beetle. Much , . . . . 



enlarged. (From Chittenden.) tion has little if any effect in protecting 



fields of corn from the attack of the larvae. 

 In the light of all the information at this time available it would 

 seem that the farmer's only hope of relief from the ravages of this 

 pest in the cornfields lies in so timing his planting in spring as not 

 to subject his crop to severe attack. Quaintance, in central Georgia, 

 secured eggs in March and April, 1900; Urbahns found young larvae 

 at Mercedes, Tex., March 1, 1909 ; George G. Ainslie observed larvae 

 attacking oats at Jackson, Miss., April 20, 1911. The author saw them 

 damaging corn at Somerset Landing, La., April 12, 1887, and April 

 27, 1888; at Madison, Ark., May 12, 1888, and at Columbia, S. C, 

 on May 4, 1906. At the last point the ravages of the larvae were 

 equally as serious as had been observed years before at Somerset Land- 

 ing, La., and Madison, Ark., but at Columbia the writer was informed 

 that corn planted after the middle of May escaped injury from the 

 pest. Nearly all of the complaints of injuries from this budworm 

 coming to us from the South refer to damage to the crop early in the 

 season, March or April, although to the northward early May is 



1 Psyche, vol. 9, p. 45, 1891. 



