REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST I917 59 



of the tobacco preparation should be used to saturate the upper 

 layers of the soil. 



The wingless beetles feed, as indicated above, on a variety of 

 plants. Owing to the fact that they must crawl from one to another 

 before depositing eggs which develop into destructive grubs, it 

 should be comparatively easy to prevent injury to annual potted 

 plants by making it impossible for crawling insects to get from 

 infested permanent plants to the others. Bands of tree tanglefoot 

 have proved most effective barriers against various crawling insects 

 and it should not be difficult to protect individual beds or series 

 of beds with this material. The probabilities are, in some green- 

 houses at least, that the pests make their way from some of the 

 more permanent plants which show comparatively little injury to 

 the smaller potted ones. Consequently if the latter can be so placed 

 on isolated benches or in separate ranges that crawling insects can 

 not make their way to them, the difficulty may be solved in large 

 measure. 



Seed corn maggot (Pegomyia fusciceps Zett.) . The work 

 of the seed corn maggot in bean fields began to be apparent the last 

 of June and continued well into July. The small, whitish maggots 

 about one-fourth of an inch long when full grown were associated 

 with general and serious injury to beans, producing " bald heads " 

 and eating long channels (plate 3) in the stems. The tendency 

 of the grower was to blame the insects for all this damage, though 

 subsequent investigations have satisfied us that in large measure 

 the difficulty was due to abnormal weather conditions and a system 

 of planting not adapted to an excessively wet soil, thus producing 

 an environment favorable for the development of this insect. An 

 examination of a number of fields in different parts of the State 

 clearly demonstrated that the mischief was restricted very largely, if 

 not entirely, either to excessively wet land or to fields where planting 

 was too deep for the amount of moisture in the soil. In other words, 

 if there had been more shallow planting or a less saturated soil, there 

 would have been comparatively little trouble from this insect. 



The following figures give some idea of the situation. The loss 

 on seed alone in one 9 acre field in Genesee county amounted to 

 $70, while from 50 to 75 per cent of the stand on 16 acres was 

 destroyed. One Monroe county grower lost $300 on seed alone. 

 The damage for Erie county was placed at 40 per cent and it was 

 estimated that one-fourth of $96,000 worth of seed was destroyed in 

 Orleans county. The work of this insect was reported from eighteen 



