8 BULLETIN 8, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
to corn he reported that the crop was attacked by these worms. In 
this case no specimens accompanied the complaint. 
It goes without saying that the beetles are found and must develop 
where very little corn is grown, but time has shown that there is 
little danger to be apprehended from these.t 
Quite recently Mr. C. N. Ainslie, of this bureau, has found slight 
injury to corn in fields in Nebraska where this crop has followed 
small grain. 
DEPREDATIONS ON LAND SUBJECT TO OVERFLOW. 
The frequent submergence during fall, winter, or early spring, 
even for weeks at a time, of fields in which the eges of these beetles 
have been deposited does not seem to affect such eggs in the least. 
Throughout the country north of the Ohio and Arkansas Rivers it 
is these low bottom lands that are kept most continuously in corn, 
and therefore it is here that in later years the danger from the pest 
is greatest. This is not, so far as now known, true of the lower 
Mississippi Valley, for the reason that planters there rotate with 
cotton, otherwise the ravages of the insect would probably he felt 
there as well as in the more northern States, as the writer has ob- 
served the beetles feeding on the pollen of the cotton bloom. Thus 
we see that throughout the country it is only where crop rotation 
is neglected that damage is at all to be feared. 

1 Possible origin of a corn-feeding 1ace.—It will be noticed that Mr. B. D. Walsh, the 
first State entomologist of Illinois, found three of these beetles in central Illinois many 
years prior to 1866 (Practical Entomologist, vol. 2, p. 10, 1866). Mr. Ottoman Reinecke, 
of Buffalo, N. ¥., wrote the author in 18985 that he had, prior to 1880 and for some 
years, collected the beeties in abundance on willow along the margin of a ereek near the 
city during July and August; while Mr. W. H. Harrington wrote the author years ago of 
his finding them in Neva Scotia. Thus it is clearly shown that the eastward advance each 
year, aS previously recorded, does not represent the real advance of the species. It rep- 
resents the advance of a race that feeds on the pollen and silk of corn, some of whose 
larve develop in the roots, the adults from these spreading from field to field and under 
favorable conditions giving rise to myriads of worms that feed on the roots and destroy 
the crop. The origin of this race appears to have been the prairie country in Illinois, 
which in many places begins at the Mississippi River and extends into northwestern 
Indiana. It is true that the first reports of injury to the roots of corn*by the larve 
came from Eureka and Kirkwood, Mo., both of which are near St. Louis; but just across 
the Mississippi River in Illinois are wide stretches of prairie country which near the 
river are subject to overflow. 

DDITIONAL COPIES ofthis publication 
may be procured from the SUPERINTEND- 
ENT OF DOCUMENTS, Government Printing 
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WASHINGTON :,GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1913 
