12 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



• 



report on the Injurious and Beneficial Insects of Missouri, char- 

 acterizes this species as one of the worst foes to the grapevine in 

 Missouri. This condemnation was based solely on the operations 

 of the beetle on the leaves, an injury which is now regarded as 

 of little importance compared with the work on the roots. Pro- 

 fessor Riley received specimens from Bunker Hill 111. in 1870, 

 and in 1873 Mr G. R. Crotch described the insect 1 and gave its 

 recorded distribution as the Middle and Southern states. The 

 identity of the species described by Mr Crotch and this insect 

 was pointed out by Dr Horn in 1892, when he recorded its dis- 

 tribution as the " Middle states to Dakota, Florida and Texas." 

 He also states that the insect described by Lefevre 2 belongs to 

 this species. This pest was received from the vicinity of Iowa 

 City la. by Prof. H. F. Wickham in 1888, and Professor Riley 

 has recorded this form and an allied one 3 as injuring grape leaves 

 at Vineland Ark. 



Nothing further was known regarding this species till 1893, 

 when specimens were sent to Prof. F. M. Webster, then of the 

 Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, who made an exhaustive 

 study of the insect and published a detailed account of his inves- 

 tigations in 1895. 



Injuries by this insect in the state of Arkansas were recorded 

 by Prof. J. T. Stinson in 1896, and in the same year Professor 

 Webster notes a decrease in the numbers of the pest in Ohio 

 vineyards and attributes it as possibly due to the efficient work 

 of two egg parasites and a small mite. 4 The following year 

 Messrs Webster and Mally reported, as a result of a series of 

 experiments, that tobacco dust and kainit were practically in- 

 effective against this insect, and two years later these gentlemen 

 record the unusual abundance of the pest in Ohio vineyards, and 

 state that serious injuries occurred at Bloomington 111. The 

 presence of this beetle in destructive numbers in the Chautauqua 

 grape belt was recorded by Prof. M. V, Slingerland in 1900, 

 who at that time published a general compiled account of the 

 insect. Dr J. B. Smith, in his Catalog of the Insects of New 



*F i d i a murina Crotch 

 *Fidia lurida Lefevre 

 3 Fidi a longipes Melsh 

 'Heteropus ventricosus Newport 



