﻿4 BULLETIN 8, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



producing counties of that State for that one year would amount to 

 nearly $2.000.000. 1 Although the pest is much more destructive on 

 high or tile-drained lands, Prof. Forbes in 1886 reported serious 

 injury to a field in southern Illinois which had been under water for 

 three weeks during the spring. 2 There is no indication that the 

 insect is susceptible to meteorological influences, although the effect 

 of its .ravages is aggravated by an extremely dry season. In fact, 

 the extreme effect of the larva upon the plants is very similar to that 

 of severe drought. 



Under date of March 7, 1887, Mr. B. F. Ferris, Sunman, Ind., a 

 close observer, communicated with the writer as follows : 



There has been for a number of years something. I know not what, working 

 at the roots of our corn, so that in some seasons the corn does not have roots 

 sufficient to support it, anything like a fresh breeze blowing it down, there 

 being scarcely any brace roots. 



Sunman is in southeastern Indiana, close to the White and Ohio 

 River Valleys, which connect with the lower Big Miami Valley in 

 western Ohio, and when the writer was transferred from Indiana to 

 Ohio, June 1, 1891, he at once became interested in learning whether 

 this corn rootworm had extended its depredations into the cornfields 

 of Ohio. The first report of injuries came from Safer, Hamilton 

 County, in the extreme southwestern part of the State, during Sep- 

 tember, 1892, the charge being that the beetles ate the silk from the 

 ears of sweet corn before the kernels had become fertilized. 



A careful survey of extreme western Ohio during the summer of 

 1893 revealed the beetles in cornfields throughout the country drained 

 by tributaries of the upper Wabash River, and throughout the valley 

 of Big Miami River, but not beyond, to the northward or eastward. 

 A similar survey, made in the summer of 1894, revealed the pest in 

 the region of the upper Maumee River in the northwestern part of 

 the State and in the valley of the Little Miami River on the east. In 

 1895 the pest had reached the Scioto River Valley, almost if not 

 quite halfway from east to west across the State, and from Columbus 

 southward to the Ohio River; while in the opposite direction its 

 range extended from Columbus more or less irregularly northwest- 

 ward to the Michigan line in Fulton County. Still later it appeared 

 farther eastward, in the upper valley of the Muskingum River. 

 There was no guesswork in these surveys, as they were carefully made 

 in person by the writer, who rode over the country each year when 

 the adult insects were abroad, examining fields and noting the pres- 

 ence or absence of the beetles. The following year these observations 

 were verified through larvae found at work by the writer or observed 

 find sent to him by farmers. 3 



1 Indiana Agricultural Report, p. 188, 1885. 



2 Entomologiea Americana, vol. 2. p. 174, 1886. 



3 Ohio Agr. Exp. Sta., Bui. 08 pp. 30-41, maps ]-2. 



