264 THE BOOK OF CORN 



the United States department of agriculture, thinks 

 it will reach its maximum in localities like parts of 

 South Carolina, where corn is simply stripped for 

 fodder in early August, and the bare stalks with the 

 ear attached stand until after the cotton is picked, 

 ginned and shipped, and where even after the ears are 

 harvested the stalks are seldom burned. In Virginia, 

 however, the conditions are nearly as favorable for the 

 continuous development of the insect. Where it is 

 not intended to follow corn with winter grain, the 

 corn is cut in October and the butts stand in the 

 ground until the following spring, affording the larvae 

 safe places for hibernation. Even in plowing for 

 another crop of corn in the spring many of the old 

 stalks are not destroyed, but still remain standing; 

 through winter. Under these conditions there is no 

 check whatsoever to the increase of the pest. Where 

 winter grain follows corn, the stalks are not thoroughly 

 dragged off. Even when collected they are rarely ever 

 burned. Where the old stalks are systematically 

 removed from the field and burned after the harvest 

 or during winter, or where a constant rotation of crops 

 is practiced, the cornstalk borer will never become a 

 serious pest. Southern farmers have it in their hands 

 to check it at any time by pursuing these methods. 

 Aside from corn, sugar cane and sorghum, this borer 

 has only one other food plant, so far as is known. 

 This is the gama grass, or sesame grass, Tripsacum 

 dactyloides, which grows very hiqb in swampy ground. 

 Farmers whose corn fields adjoin swampy ground 

 should burn over the grass during the winter. The 

 rotation of crops is reasonably efficient against this 

 insect. 



The smaller cornstalk borer is a tropical species 

 occurring in Alabama, Georgia, North and South Car- 

 olina, Florida, Kansas, Texas and as far north as 



