78 THE REPORT OF THE No. 33 



The European corn borer has already established its importance as a serious 

 corn-crop pest in approximately one thousand square miles of territory in Ontario. 

 In Massachusetts, it is causing serious financial losses, through infestation in 

 other crops in addition to corn, and the development of similar conditions in 

 portions of the Ontario infested area is regarded as possible. 



Greater efforts were made this season in the enforcement of the quarantine 

 which gave further assurance of the importance of infested table-corn trans- 

 portation as a means of spread. One phase of the quarantine work consisted 

 of automobile inspection. During the week-ends a total of 1,434 automobiles 

 were held up at different points on the quarantine border from which ninety 

 dozen ears were seized. Seventeen ears were found infested. 



In 1921, the township of Pickering in Ontario county was found infested, 

 and in 1922 a collection of the borer was taken in Brighton township, North- 

 umberland county. These outbreaks were situated some distance from the 

 nearest infestation discovered in the years mentioned and were very probably 

 due to the movement of infested material. The difficulty of teaching control 

 methods and the financial outlay involved is naturally associated with the size 

 of the infested territory and the extent of crop losses is likewise similarly affected. 

 A large corn-growing acreage in Ontario is still uninfested and southwestern 

 Quebec grows corn abundantly. It is therefore necessary to expend every effort 

 possible to prevent the artificial spread of the pest to new districts, by means of 

 strict quarantine enforcement. 



THE STATUS OF THE CONTROL PRACTICE FOR THE EUROPEAN 

 CORN BORER IN ONTARIO 



(A Progress Report) 



H. G. Crawford, Entomologist, Division of Field Crop and Garden 

 Insects, Entomological Branch, Department of Agriculture, 



Ottawa 



The preliminary scouting and investigations of the European corn borer 

 in Canada indicated that the focus of the most intense infestation in 1920 lay 

 in the region surrounding the village of Union, midway between St. Thomas and 

 the Lake Erie shore, in the county of Elgin, Ontario. The indications in 1920 

 were amply confirmed in 1921 by a devastating increase of the injury caused by 

 the pest in this vicinity. Hence the area in which control measures could be 

 tried with greatest benefit and with most clear-cut results was selected in this 

 region. Here a block of farms two miles square, referred to as the control area 

 with the village of Union in the centre, was decided upon as the area of most 

 pressing need. The area involved was very representative and presented a great 

 variety of conditions in the immediate vicinity both physiographic and agri- 

 cultural, the corn varying from that in household kitchen gardens and a con- 

 siderable acreage of early market sweet corn to general farm croppings. 



Within this area ever since the fall of 1921 every reasonable effort has been 

 made to ensure that the general control measures were put into practice by the 

 growers. Considering the short time during which the operations have been 

 carried on, the lack of care on the part of farmers here and there, the character 

 of the methods themselves, the small size of the area, and the motility of the 

 moths, the results have been most encouraging. The co-operation of the farmers 



