THE ENTOMOLOGICAL RECORD FOR 1885-86, 



To the economic entomolosjist the season of 1885 was especially 

 notable for an extraordinary outbreak, in the western part of the 

 State, of two or three of our common species of grasshoppers; 

 and 1886 was distinguished by a disastrous attack of the chinch 

 bug on the wheat, oats, and corn of Southern Illinois, which, to- 

 gether with a severe drouth, greatly diminished the crops of small 

 grain and hay over several counties, and completely destroyed the 

 corn in hundreds of fields. The grasshopper uprising having now 

 disappeared, a full account of it is given elsewhere; but a discus- 

 sion of the chinch-bug attack may best be postponed until another 

 report, when its complete history may probably be written. 



The European cabbage worm {Pieris rapce) has clearly been 

 less abundant during the past two years throughout that part of 

 the State under our observation than for several years preced- 

 ing. The same scarcity was noted by some of my correspondents. 

 Dr. Goding, for example, wiiting from Livingston county on the 

 24th July, 1885, reported that it was difficult to find a single 

 cabbage worm in the field; and Dr. Boardman, in xlugust, 1885, 

 informed me that these insects were very much less abundant in 

 Stark county than usual. This difference, so favorable to the 

 horticulturist, was due apparently to the continued prevalence of 

 the white plague of the cabbage worm, — a destructive disease first 

 reported by me in September, 1883, and described in full in the 

 Bulletin of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History, Yol. 

 II., Art. IV., pp. 261-264. Numerous examples of its extraordinary 

 destructiveness occurred in the course of our observations. Visit- 

 ing a cabbage field near C^hampaign late in August, 1885, the 

 owner of which had reported a few days previously that it was 

 being destroyed by the cabbage worm, we failed to find in twenty 

 minutes' search a single living larva, the leaves being, however, 

 badly riddled, and the dried and blackened remnants of the dead 

 cabbage worms giving unmistakable evidence of their recent pres- 

 ence. 



