2 DEPARTMENT BULLETIN 1267, TJ. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 



inaccessible, temporary headquarters were established in the heart 

 of the infested district, in order to study the problem at first hand. 

 In the spring of 1915 the junior writer was assigned to Tappahan- 

 nock, where he remained until October. In the meantime detailed 

 studies were being conducted in breeding cages at Charlottesville as 

 a check on the work at Tappahannock. The junior writer re- 

 turned to Tappahannock in 1916 to complete the data on the life 

 history and to start field experiments for controlling the pest, the 

 results of which have already been published in brief (9). In this 

 publication it was termed the " rough-headed corn stalk-beetle," a 

 translation of the specific name which seems more appropriate than 

 its earlier name of " sugar-cane beetle," since the insect has been 

 receiving constantly growing emphasis as a corn pest. 



ECONOMIC HISTORY 



Euetheola omgioeps (PL II, A) was first named and described by 

 John Le Conte (8) in 1856 from specimens obtained in Georgia, and 

 was for a number of years thereafter considered a rather rare southern 

 insect. Eiley (10) and Comstock (2) published the first records of 

 the depredations of this pest in 1880, when it first attracted their 

 attention as a sugar-cane insect on the plantations in Louisiana. 

 Comstock stated that, the planters in the infested district claimed 

 to have known the pest and had recognized it as a serious menace to 

 sugar cane for a period of about 20 years preceding the outbreak in 

 the seventies. According to the planters, the first serious outbreak 

 occurred about 1855 or 1856 ; the next destructive one was in 1875. 

 During 1875 and the two succeeding years the depredations on the 

 sugar-cane plantations caused serious alarm, but there seems to have 

 been a decrease in the activities of the insect in 1879. In 1880 the 

 beetles reappeared and inflicted serious loss. This outbreak was re- 

 ported by Comstock (-5). Although both Riley and Comstock inci- 

 dentally recorded the insect as injuring corn, it was considered pri- 

 marily a sugar-cane pest and received the vernacular name of " su- 

 gar-cane beetle," and by this term it has been designated in the 

 literature until recently. L. O. Howard (7) in 1888 was the first to 

 recognize E. rugiceps as a corn pest, publishing in that year an ac- 

 count of its depredations to corn in North Carolina and Mississippi. 

 About the same time F. M. Webster (14) made similar observations 

 in Arkansas and Louisiana. In 1895 Weed (15, 16) reported losses 

 to corn growers in Mississippi, but, through what was evidently an 

 error in identification, attributed the damage to Ligyrus gibbosus 

 which it is now believed never injures corn. Since then depredations 

 by this pest have been reported at rather frequent intervals by an in- 

 creasing number of investigators, among whom may be mentioned 

 Titus (13), Garman (6), and Sherman (11), the last-mentioned au- 

 thor especially having published an interesting account of the beetle 

 and its work in North Carolina. 



The earliest record of injury to corn in Virginia was in 1913, when 

 several farmers reported injury in the " tidewater " section of the 

 State. In the following year the depredations were most severe. 



