4 BULLETIN 8, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
producing counties of that State for that one year would amount to 
nearly $2,000,000... Although the pest is much more destructive on 
high or tile-drained lands, Prof. Forbes in 1886 reported serious 
injury to a field in southern Illinois which had been under water for 
three weeks during the spring. There is no indication that the 
insect is susceptible to meteorological influences, although the effect 
of its ravages is aggravated by an extremely dry season. In fact, 
the extreme effect of the larva upon the plants is very similar to that 
of severe drought. 
Under date of March 7, 1887, Mr. B. F. Ferris, Sunman, Ind., a 
close observer, communicated with the writer as follows: 
There has been for a number of years something, I know not what, working 
at the roots of our corn, so that in some seasons the corn does not have roots 
sufficient to support it, anything like a fresh breeze blowing it down, there 
being scarcely any brace roots. 
Sunman is in southeastern Indiana, close to the White and Ohio 
River Valleys, which connect with the lower Big Miami Valley in 
western Ohio, and when the writer was transferred from Indiana to 
Ohio, June 1, 1891, he at once became interested in learning whether 
this corn reotworm had extended its depredations into the cornfields 
of Ohio. The first report of injuries came from Sater, Hamilton 
County, in the extreme southwestern part of the State, during Sep- 
tember, 1892, the charge being that the beetles ate the silk from the 
ears of sweet corn before the kernels had become fertilized. 
A careful survey of extreme western Ohio during the summer of 
1893 revealed the beetles in cornfields throughout the country drained 
by tributaries of the upper Wabash River, and throughout the valley 
of Big Miami River, but not beyond, to the northward or eastward. 
A similar survey, made in the summer of 1894, revealed the pest in 
the region of the upper Maumee River in the northwestern part of 
the State and in the valley of the Little Miami River on the east. In 
1895 the pest had reached the Scioto River Valley, almost if not 
quite halfway from east to west across the State, and from Columbus 
southward to the Ohio River; while in the opposite direction its 
range extended from Columbus more or less irregularly northwest- 
ward to the Michigan line in Fulton County. Still later it appeared 
farther eastward, in the upper valley of the Muskingum River. 
There was no guesswork in these surveys, as they were carefully made 
in person by the writer, who rode over the country each year when 
the adult insects were abroad, examining fields and noting the pres- 
ence or absence of the beetles. The following year these observations 
were verified through larvee found at work by the writer or observed 
and sent to him by farmers.? 


1Indiana Agricultural Report, p. 188, 1885. 
2 Entomologica Americana, vol. 2. p. 174, 1886. 
2 Ohio Agr. Exp. Sta., Bul. 68. pp. 39-41, maps 1-2. 
