NEW YORK STATE ^MUSEUM 37 



CORN EAR WORM 

 Chloridca ohsolcta Fabr. 



The corn ear worm was exceptionally injurious and unusually 

 widely distributed over the State in 1921, its general occurrence 

 beiftg almost unprecedented and accompanied by great injury in 

 Madison county, considerable to serious damage in Orleans, Cayuga, 

 Livingston and Allegany counties and appreciable injury in Chau- 

 tauqua, Chemung, Monroe, Orange, Wyoming and Yates counties. 

 One Wyoming county correspondent reported one to six or eight 

 larvae in nearly every ear of a small field of corn. The central and 

 western parts of the State suffered most as was the case in 1919. 



It is quite possible that the general interest in the European corn 

 borer, both last season and in 1919, resulted in corn being watched 

 more closely than in earlier years and consequently the numerous 

 reports the past few seasons as compared with those of earlier 

 years may give an erroneous impression respecting the relative 

 abundance of the insect. The pest was received in 1921 by various 

 official entomologists from almost every county in the State. Prof. 

 C. R. Crosby states that golden bantam corn seemed to be especially 

 favored by the insect and he records one case where i^ acres of 

 wax beans were so badly infested as to render the crop unmarket- 

 able. 



The widespread injuries noted above were by no means confined 

 to New York State. Similar conditions, we are informed by various 

 correspondents, occurred in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsyl- 

 vania and Ohio and Prof. W. A. Ross of the Entomological 

 Laboratory, Vineland, Ontario, stated that the ear worm was so 

 remarkably abundant and. injurious that in some parts of south- 

 western Ontario the canning factories had to close because the corn 

 was so badly infested that practically none of it was fit for canning 

 purposes. For the first time in Canada, so far as he was aware, 

 greenhouse tomatoes were attacked in southern Ontario, most of 

 the injury occurring in early October. 



There was an approach to the general prevalence of ear worm 

 in 192 1 two years earlier. This, like the outbreak of the past 

 season, followed a mild winter. It was then received at Cornell 

 University according to data supplied by Prof. C. R. Crosby, from 

 seventeen localities representing eleven counties. The records of 



