100 



A powder-post beetle (Lyctus sf rictus Melsh.)'- is causing much 

 concern to wholesale houses dealing' with ax handles and wheel spokes, 

 shafts, and the like. 



This office is ready to indorse the borax remedy for cockroaches or 

 croton bugs, having met with complete success with its use after 

 trying without good results various other remedies. 



Lachnosterna spp. has been extremely injurious this season, work- 

 ing not only on sod, but also on the roots of wheat and barley, and 

 has been found by the writer killing, in nurseries, the Colorado blue 

 spruce, a tree which brings nurserymen from 82 to So when 1 feet 

 high. The species has been identified in some instances as rugosa, 

 and other specimens are now in the breeding cage awaiting transforma- 

 tion. One nurseryman told the writer that he had lost some years 

 ago through the agency of this genus every small evergreen tree 

 except his cedars. 



This has been a bad year for potato beetles, it being claimed that 

 they have not been so numerous for a number of years. 



The horn fly, as was to be expected, has been troublesome on cattle 

 and other stock. 



Of the leading pests of Minnesota — grasshoppers, the chinch bug, 

 and Hessian fly — we have to report very little injury from the first, 

 which in 1902 made themselves conspicuous in the northwestern cor- 

 ner of the State. I refer to the native form Melanoplvs atlan is, which 

 was quite destructive last year, but hardly heard from during the sea- 

 son just passed. This is undoubtedly in part due to the fact that a 

 grasshopper law was passed by the legislature last winter obliging the 

 owner or lessee of land declared infested with grasshopper eggs to 

 plow said land. Farmers and others promptly took care of large 

 tracts of land which had lain fallow for several years in the north- 

 western part of the State, the same being known to have been a fre- 

 quent breeding ground of the pest previously. The few cases of 

 injury reported this season could be traced directly to one or two 

 plats of land which had not been plowed, the bill becoming a law too 

 late to be effective in these cases this season. Weather conditions 

 have done much to influence the work of the chinch bug, which, with 

 the exception of Stearns and adjoining counties in the central part of 

 the State, has not caused any special injury. But in the counties 

 above mentioned, particularly in Stearns County, it has been more 

 troublesome than for many years, farmers losing all the way from 10 

 to 50 per cent, and in some cases their entire crop of wheat. 



The Hessian fly. now spread over our entire wheat-growing regions, 

 was not serious in the northern part of the State, partly on account of 

 extreme dryness in that portion during the spring and early summer, 



r? Xow recognized as Lyctus unipunctatus Hbst.. common to both continents. — 

 F. H. C. 



