10 Bulletin of the New York State Museum. 



the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society, at New Orleans, on 

 February 22, 1883, represents it (page 27 of Author's edition) as 

 " perhaps the most unsatisfactory insect with which the strawberry-, 

 grower has to deal, oflferiug the fewest opportunities for effective 

 attack. The roots of the plant are often destroyed by it to a 

 degree to impair seriously the value of the plantation." Mr. B. 

 D. Walsh has written of it that it " is particularly destructive to 

 strawberry beds and is probably one of the chief reasons why this 

 plant will not last more than a few years on the same spot of 

 ground in this country" {Pract. Ent, iii, p. 60). Dr. Packard 

 records its ravages at Salem, Mkss., where many plants were killed 

 by its eating the main roots and thus passing from one plant to 

 another (Third Report Inj. Ins. Mass., 1873, p. 6). 



To Potatoes.— In Washington county, N. Y., during the year 

 1881, the grub is charged with having devoured whole fields of 

 potatoes. 



Hundreds of bushels were reported as having been made unfit 

 for market, in North Pawlet, Vt., in 1884, by the grubs having 

 eaten holes into them {New England Homestead, for Nov. 8, 

 1884), 



To Wheat. — Of its injuries to wheat and other grains, Professor 

 Webster has written : " During autumn there is hardly a field of 

 wheat here in Indiana that does not, to a greater or less extent, 

 show the effects of their voracious appetites. Their method of 

 work in the grain fields seems to be much more erratic than in 

 grass lands, as the many clusters of from two to twenty, or per- 

 haps more, dead plants that have been- eaten off below the surface, 

 illustrate. Their work in spring wheat, and oats during spring, is 

 usually less noticeable, and we have never observed the grubs 

 feeding on the roots of spring-sown grain later than the fifteenth 

 of May." 



To Barley. ^ 'PxoiessoT Webster also reports that the larvae 

 were observed in the University Experiment farm at La Fayette, 

 Ind., cutting off the roots of the fuU-grown and fuUy-headed grain. 

 As late as the twenty-eighth of June they were causing whole 

 stocks of the straw to wither and die before the kernels had filled 

 {Ann. Bept. Comm. Agriculture, for 1886, p. 575). 



