SOME INSECTS INJURIOUS TO GARDEN CROPS. 



A NEW VINE-BORER OF LIMA BEANS. 



(2fonoptUota nuhilella Hulst.) 

 BORERS IN THE STALK OF BEANS. 



Until the appearance of a short note by Dr. A. D. Hopkins and 

 Mr. W. E. Kumsey in Bulletin ±± of the West Virginia Agricultural 

 Experiment Station, published in April, 1896 (p. 303), no boring 

 insect, as far as the writer is aware, was known to infest the stalk or 

 vines of the bean plant. The note in question mentions, under the head- 

 ing u The bean-vine borer," that this was a new pest, and was observed 

 in Wood County, W. *Va., in July, 1893, where considerable damage 

 was done, attention having been called to this form of injury by Mrs. 

 Bradford Neal. The larva was described as a whitish worm, about an 

 inch long and resembling very closely the well-known squash-vine 

 borer (Melittia satyriniformis). The attack was upon pole Lima-bean 

 vines, usually at a point two or three feet above ground. The moth 

 was not reared, hence the species of insect was not identified. 



In the fall of 1898 the writer noticed numerous large gall-like swell- 

 ings upon Lima beans growing in Maryland near the District of 

 Columbia line. The following season material was obtained for 

 study and illustration, and the species was reared to the adult. Dur- 

 ing this same year Prof. F. S. Earle, of Auburn, Ala., sent specimens 

 of the larvae of borers in beans, one sending being made in June and 

 another in August. From the first only a single male moth was ob- 

 tained, and the second sending was an entirely different species of 

 insect, the smaller corn stalk-borer {Elasmopalpus lignosellus). To 

 the best of the writer's knoAvledge, neither of these two species of 

 borer has been identified with injury to the bean plant until the 

 present time. 



Of the first sending received from Auburn, Ala. , a larva issued enroute, 

 being near maturity at the date of its receipt, June 15. The moth 

 developed July 7. Larvse were not abundant at the time of writing. 



A peculiarity in regard to the noticed appearance of this species in 

 its more northern range is that it could not be found in any other 

 locality visited, not even in gardens within from one to three miles 

 of the place where attack was first noticed. In short, infestation 



