PREFACE. 



Under the comprehensive title, Some Insects Injurious to Garden 

 and Orchard Crops, the writer has brought together a series of arti- 

 cles bearing upon insects of this class. These are in continuation of 

 work begun in previous years, the results of which have found expres- 

 sion in Bulletin No. 10, in the Yearbooks for 1896 and 1898, and else- 

 where, and are based upon observations conducted, for the most part, 

 during the year 1898. At the same time there has been added, from 

 the notes that have accumulated by correspondence and otherwise in 

 this office, as matters of record, much that is new or unpublished con- 

 cerning the food and other habits as well as the distribution of the 

 species of insects considered. 



In connection with the topics that are dealt with somewhat at length, 

 the matter of remedies and other methods of control has received due 

 consideration. The fact that this bulletin is to a certain extent a pop- 

 ular-scientific one has suggested the wisdom, as a means of enhancing 

 its value to the practical worker, of the addition of a brief summary of 

 remedies to articles that take the form of notes or incomplete accounts. 



Late in the season of 1897 the subject of the insects affecting cucur- 

 bit crops was taken up as a specialty, and seven of the topics here dis- 

 cussed treat of this class of insects. In the course of investigations 

 conducted in Maryland and Virginia and in the District of Columbia 

 in the vicinity of Washington, the squash ladybird often came under 

 observation, and it was found that a number of points of interest were 

 omitted by earlier writers, and these, together with some descriptive 

 and other notes necessary to the completion of the account, are brought 

 together in connection with the illustrations as the initial subject of the 

 bulletin. The life history of the common squash bug, Anasa tristis, 

 although a well-known pest nearly everywhere, has not previously, to 

 the writer's knowledge, been studied at all fully. The allied Anasa 

 armigera has for the first time come under observation during the past 

 two years as a species of economic importance, and has received atten- 

 tion in the same manner as its more common congener. The remaining 

 four articles on cucurbit pests contain more or less information that 

 has not previously been made public. 



One of the most interesting of the injurious occurrences of the year 

 1898 was the discovery of an insect that is apt to prove of great economic 

 importance in the course of time. This is an imported web worm, Hel- 

 lula undalis. and it is at present troublesome to cabbage, turnip, and 

 other cruciferous crops in the neighborhood of Augusta, Ga. The 

 cultivation of these crops has been for many years a matter of extreme 



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