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also in Cuba. The territory infested during the year comprised por- 

 tions of New York and New Jersey in the North and East, and from 

 there southward to Florida, and westward to Texas, including among 

 Western States, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. 



Although the species is a common one, and known to husbandmen 

 generally as distinct from the true army worm (Leucania unipancta 

 Haw.), its life history has not as yet been studied in all its details in 

 any single locality, to the writer's knowledge. It is hoped during the 

 coming season to settle certain points as to the insect's life habits and 

 economy; and as the insect is one of great and growing importance, it 

 is proposed to bring together all the most salient facts concerning it, 

 in the form of a bulletin, when the missing data have been supplied. 

 In the present paper a brief account of injurious occurrences of the 

 season of 1899 will be furnished, together with a mere outline of other 

 matters pertaining to the insect, pending a more complete account. 



The fall army worm is essentially a grass feeder, attacking grasses of 

 all sorts, as well as the most succulent grains, but when these foods are 

 exhausted, as happened during the past year, the caterpillars, driven 

 by hunger, avail themselves of almost anything green, and at such 

 times become pests in gardens, orchards, and greenhouses, as well as 

 in the field. Although, properly speaking, a field-crop insect, this 

 species does such considerable damage in the vegetable gardens, and 

 to so great a variety of truck crops, that it is for purposes of conven- 

 ience considered in the present bulletin. 



The list of localities where outbreaks were noticed duing the year, 

 although large, does not by any means afford ground as to a full 

 estimate of the ravages of this pest. Many correspondents reported 

 the "array worm" in their vicinity where it was impossible to obtain 

 specimens of the insect. As only four reports reached us during the 

 season of injury by the true army worm, there is every reason to 

 believe that the fall army worm was the insect present in nearly every 

 case. Reports of injury by this insect usually attract attention late in 

 the season, and for this reason only a single publication on this subject, 

 emanating from the University of Nebraska, appeared during the year. 



INJURIOUS OCCURRENCES OF THE SEASON OF 1899. 



The first instance of reported injury was received from a corres- 

 pondent who wrote June 19 of damage to the rice crop in the neigh- 

 borhood of Wilmington, N. C. In this case, as in others which will 

 be reported, specimens accompanied the communication. 



During July we received a report of an outbreak at Cherry, N. C. , 

 and of much damage to corn, rice, peas, grasses, and young corn. 

 During the latter days of that month the writer's attention was called 

 by Dr. P. B. Kennedy, of the Division of Agrostology, to injury to an 

 experimental plat of creeping bent-grass. Agrostis stolonifera, on the 



