2 DEPARTMENT BULLETIN 1267, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
inaccessible, temporary headquarters were established in the heart 
of the infested district, in order to study the problem at first hand. 
In the spring of 1915 the junior writer was assigned to Tappahan- 
nock, where he remained until October. In the meantime detailed 
studies were being conducted in breeding cages at Charlottesville as 
a check on the work at Tappahannock. The junior writer re- 
turned to Tappahannock in 1916 to complete the data on the hfe 
history and to start field experiments for controlling the pest, the 
results of which have already been published in brief (9). In this 
publication it was termed the “rough-headed corn stalk-beetle,” a 
translation of the specific name which seems more appropriate than 
its earlier name of “ sugar-cane beetle,’ since the insect has been 
receiving constantly growing emphasis as a corn pest. 
ECONOMIC HISTORY 
Euetheola rugiceps (Pl. Ti, A) was first named and described by 
John Le Conte (8) in 1856 from specimens obtained in Georgia, and 
was for a number of years thereafter considered a rather rare southern 
insect. Riley (70) and Comstock (2) published-the first records of 
the depredations of this pest in 1880, when it first attracted their 
attention as a sugar-cane insect on the plantations in Louisiana. 
Comstock stated that the planters in the infested district claimed 
to have known the pest and had recognized it as a serious menace to 
sugar cane for a period of about 20 years precedmg the outbreak in 
the seventies. According to the planters, the first serious outbreak 
occurred about 1855 or 1856; the next destructive one was in 1875. 
During 1875 and the two succeeding years the depredations on the 
sugar-cane plantations caused serious alarm, but there seems to have 
been a decrease: in the activities of the insect in 1879. In 1880 the 
beetles reappeared and inflicted serious loss. This outbreak was re- 
ported by Comstock (3). Although both Riley and Comstock inci- 
dentally recorded the insect as injuring corn, it was considered pri- 
marily a sugar-cane pest. and received the vernacular name of “ su- 
gar-cane beetle,’ and by this term it has been designated in the 
literature until recently. L. O. Howard (7) in 1888 was the first to 
recognize H’. rugiceps as a corn pest, publishing in that year an ac- 
count of its depredations to corn in North Carolina and Mississippi. 
About the same time F. M. Webster (74) made similar observations 
in Arkansas and Louisiana. In 1895 Weed (15, 1/6) reported losses 
to corn growers in Mississippi, but, through what was evidently an 
error in identification, attributed the damage to Ligyrus gibbosus 
which it is now believed never injures corn. Since then depredations 
by this pest. have been reported at rather frequent intervals by an in- 
creasing number of investigators, among whom may be mentioned 
Titus (13), Garman (6), and Sherman (/1), the last-mentioned au- 
thor especially having published an interesting account of the beetle 
and its work in North Carolina. 
The earliest record of injury to corn in Virginia was in 1913, when 
several farmers reported injury in the “tidewater” section of the 
State. In the following year the depredations were most severe. 
