BULLETIN T*-:, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



The insect has for many years been a serious pest to tobacco and 

 corn in Maryland. W. G. Johnson, formerly State entomologist, 

 recorded the species as extremely abundant and destructive in 

 Prince Georges, Cecil, Kent, Queen Anne, and Dorchester Coun- 

 ties in 1897, and reported damage in various parts of the State in 

 1898, 1899, and 1900, many fields of young corn being almost com- 

 pletely destroyed. 



M. H. Beck with mentions it as injurious to corn in Delaware, and 

 John B. Smith has recorded injury to corn in New Jersey. 



ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION. 



Crambus caliglnosdJus has been recorded only from North Amer- 

 ica. Its preference for the naturalized buckhorn plantain and ox- 

 eve daisy as food plants, however, points to the possibility that it 

 has been introduced from Europe. 



In literature the recorded distribution of the species is as follows: 

 Ontario (Saunders, Felt, and Fernald); New York (Grote, Felt, and 



Fernald); Delaware (Beckwith); New 

 Jersey (Smith); Maryland (Johnson 

 and Howard); Massachusetts, Penn- 

 sylvania, District of Columbia, North 

 Carolina, Illinois, and Texas (Fer- 

 nald); Virginia (Mathewson, Ander- 

 son, and Runner); Ohio (Gossard). 



In collections in the National Mu- 

 seum are specimens from the follow- 

 ing localities: Washington, D. C. 

 (August Busck); Plummers Island, 

 Md. (H. S. Barber); Plainfield, N. J. 

 Pittsburgh, Pa. (H. Engel); Clarksville, Tenn. 

 Chapel Hill, Tenn. (G. G. Ainslie); Vienna, Va. 



Fig. 1.— Adult, or moth, stage of the tobacco 

 Crambus. or " wireworm" f Crambus cali- 

 ginosellus). Enlarged. (Original.) 



(F. O. Herring); 

 (A. C. Morgan); 

 (R. A. Cushman). 



Records of the Bureau of Entomology show the insect to be present 

 in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North 

 Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentuck} T . 



These records indicate a wide distribution, but as most reports of 

 injury to cultivated crops come from certain portions of the Eastern 

 States it is probable that severe injury occurs only in localities where 

 natural food plants are exceedingly abundant, and where crops 

 subject to injury are planted at the time the larva? are completing 

 their growth and are in their most active feeding stage. 



SEASONAL HISTORY. 



The moths ('fig. 1 ) emerge during summer, the heaviest emergence 

 occurring at Appomattox, in central Virginia, during the first and 

 second weeks iii August. The earliest emergence takes place during 



