300 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



moistened, then dusted with a mixture of one part of Paris green to 

 twenty of flour, and placed carefully with the dusted surface next to 

 the ground. Two such applications, particularly in cloudy weather, at 

 intervals of three or four days, will suffice to allow the cut- worms to 

 make away with themselves, which they generally do with perfect suc- 

 cess. This plan, first recommended by Professor Riley, is the best I 

 have found. Whoever adopts it will rid himself of the pest at least 

 cost and trouble, and will not be compelled to replant constantly or to 

 sow his seed thickly."* 



In our own experience we used chiefly clover sprinkled with Paris-green 

 water and laid at intervals between the rows, in loosely-tied masses or 

 balls, which served the double purpose of prolonging the freshness of 

 the bait and of affording a lure for shelter. 



OTHER CABBAGE INSECTS. 



THE IMBRICATED SjTOUT-BEETLE. 

 (Epiccerus imbricatus Say.) 

 Order Coleoptera; family Otiorhynchid^e. 

 [Plate HI; Fig. 5.] 



This widely-distributed beetle, found in every portion of our territory 

 east of the Rocky Mountains and south and west of Pennsylvania, was 

 first figured by us in the Prairie Farmer for July 3 8, 1863, for an article 1 >y 

 Mr. Walsh, and subsequently treated as an injurious species in our Third 

 Missouri Entomological Report. We there stated that it frequently 

 damaged apple and cherry trees and gooseberry bushes by gnawing 

 the trees and fruit, and that it was a native of the more Western States, 

 occurring much more commonly west than east of the Mississippi. 



In 1873 we received it from Iowa as doing some damage to corn, and 

 it is often quite abundant in corn-fields in Western States. In 1879 this 

 weevil made its appearance in great numbers in Monroe County, East 

 Tennessee. Upon the truck farm ot Mr. Thomas G. Boyd, of Sweet- 

 water, it was especially numerous, destroying not only cabbages, but 

 radishes, beans, watermelons, muskmelons, cucumbers, corn, and beets. 

 Peas, parsnips, carrots, and tomatoes were not touched. Onions suf- 

 fered particularly, and stalks were sent to the Department filled with 

 holes gnawed by the weevil. In treating of this occurrence, Professor 

 Comstock (Annual Report Department of Agriculture, 1879, p. 249, is- 

 sued October, 1880), said : 



" From this remarkable occurrence on so many new food-plants and 

 so far east, this insect becomes of the first importance, and the Eastern 

 market gardeners may ere long have a new foe to contend with." 



Curiously enough, before this report w r as out of press we received 

 specimens of the same insect from Prof. George Thurber, of New York 

 City, with the statement that they had been received from Felton, Del., 

 where they were ''destroying the early cabbage, eating the leaves, and 

 sucking the juice from the stem." This statement we published in the 

 American Entomologist for August, 1880 (Vol. Ill : new series, Vol. I, 

 p. 200). The beetle had not been noticed in that locality before as a 



* Truck-farming at the South. A guide to the raising of vegetables for the northern 

 markets, by Dr. A. Oemler. Orange Judd Company, 1883. 



