REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST 



437 



According to Mr. Fletcher, as quoted by l'Abbe V. A. lluard (loc. 

 cit.), " It is very common in all Manitoba and the North- West, on the 

 Keg undo aceroides. I have found it in abundance at Regina and in 

 the environs of Winnipeg." 



Probable Eastern Spread. 



It is strange that with its adaptability to such varied degrees of 

 temperatures — from North Dakota and Washington to Mexico — 

 and other even more dissimilar conditions, that it has not extended its 

 range, so far as known, to the eastward of the Mississippi river. Its 

 favorite food-plant — the box-elder — and the only one on which it has 

 been said to breed, is widely distributed over most of the eastern half 

 of the United States. 



Its more specific distribution, given by Sargent, is herewith quoted, 

 as of interest in connection with possible future spread of the insect : 



Acer Negundo is one of the most widely distributed, and in some 

 parts of the country one of the commonest trees of the North Ameri- 

 can forest. It occurs on the banks of the Winooski river and of Lake 

 Champlain in Vermont, on the shores of Cayuga lake in New York, 

 in Eastern Pennsylvania, and ranges to Hernando county in Florida, 

 and northwestward to Dog's Head lake in Winnipeg and along the 

 southern branch of the Saskatchewan to the eastern base of the Rocky 

 Mountains; in the United States it is found as far west as the eastern 

 slopes of the Rocky Mountains in Montana, the Wahsatch Mountains 

 in Utah, Western Texas New Mexico, and Eastern Arizona, extending 

 south along the mountain ranges of Northeastern Mexico. It is com- 

 paratively rare in all the region east of the Appalachian Mountains and 

 is much more common in the basin of the Mississippi, being the most 

 abundant and reaching its greatest size in the valleys of the streams 

 which flow into the lower Ohio river. (Sargent's Sdva of North Amer- 

 ica, ii, 1891, p. 112.) 



Accepting the popular belief that the insect breeds on the box- 

 elder* and that it is or was originally its preferred food-plant, then we 

 may expect that within a few years, perhaps five, it will have reached 

 in Illinois the region drained by the streams flowing into the lower 

 Ohio river, where the Negundo finds its best conditions for growth 

 and multiplication, soon thereafter to extend over the entire drainage 

 area of the river, computed at 214,000 square miles, and thence grad- 

 ually over a large portion of the eastern United States. 



From the fondness that this insect has recently shown for ripe fruit, 

 and not always waiting for the ripening, it is hoped that eastern fruit- 

 growers may long be spared from the foreshadowed spread of this per- 

 nicious fruit pest and its injuries. 



*Mr. A. L. Siler, of Rouch, Utah, in sending examples of the insect to Prof. Riley, in 1885, 

 Btated that the/ were bred on the box-elder stiadtj-tree3. 



