8 REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST I92I 



Creek, Chautauqua county, with the understanding that the state 

 authorities would cooperate in an educational campaign to bring 

 about better conditions in the more sparsely infested, outlying sec- 

 tions. A very brief statement of the situation with a series of 

 recommendations, which were indorsed at a conference of federal 

 and state officials at Buffalo that fall, was prepared by the Ento- 

 mologist and has been widely distributed in the infested areas by 

 the Bureau of Plant Industry as Circular 199, Department of Farms 

 and Markets. The distribution of literature was followed by public 

 meetings and the utilization of all available agencies in promoting a 

 general adoption of modifications in agricultural practice unfavor- 

 able to the successful development of the European corn borer. 

 The Entomologist has also prepared a revision of the Cornell 

 Extension Bulletin 31. 



Other corn insects. The great interest in the European corn 

 borer in 19 19 resulted in many careful and repeated examinations 

 of corn fields throughout the State, and one outcome is the finding 

 and reporting of a number of injurious insects. The lined corn 

 borer, hitherto supposed to be rare in New York State, was rather 

 widely distributed and somewhat injurious in 19 19, though it attracted 

 little or no attention the following two seasons. The well-known stalk 

 borer and grass webworms also attracted considerable notice and 

 the past season the corn ear worm was so generally abundant that 

 it caused more injury in the State than the European corn borer. 

 It was reported in greater or less numbers from practically all 

 counties, most of the injury being in the central and western parts 

 of the State, particularly in Madison county. The loss was greatest 

 on sweet corn and in some instances approached a considerable 

 proportion of the crop. Available data indicate a close relation 

 between this outbreak and the unusually mild winter preceding. 



Small grain pests. The unusual abundance of the wheat midge, 

 Thecodiplosis mosellana Gehin, in 1918 and the ever- 

 present probability of injury by the Hessian fly, Phytophaga 

 destructor Say, and the wheat joint worms, I s o s o m a 

 t r i t i c i Fitch and I . vaginicolum Doane, has resulted in 

 annual wheat surveys during the past 3 years designed to accumu- 

 late data indicating the relative abundance of these insects and the 

 probabilities of damage the following season. These data are sum- 

 marized in the body of the report. 



Army worm caterpillars, Heliophila unipuncta Haw., 

 survived the very severe winter of 191 8-19 in a partly grown condi- 



