OR BTTDWORM. 3 
sentative Burleson of that State, informed the writer that the larva? 
begin to work on the roots cf Johnson grass during the latter part 
of July. They eat small holes under each joint, and by the latter 
part of November the roots are dead, and the Johnson grass, as he 
expressed it, " looks more like rotten sea grass than anything I can 
compare it to." This correspondent refers to their work on John- 
son grass as being more beneficial than otherwise. 
FOOD OF THE BEETLES. 
The fully developed insect, or beetle (fig. 1, a), is a decidedly gen- 
eral feeder, eating readily almost any cultivated plant. A list of 
its food plants would be more interesting for what it did not include 
and if given in full would be entirely out of place in a publication 
of this character. Of grain and forage crops it has been observed to 
feed on corn, wheat, oats, rye, barley, buckwheat (probably), alfalfa, 
cowpea, soy bean, clover, timothy, milo maize, Kafir, pearl millet, 
vetch, Johnson grass, and rape. 
DEPREDATIONS OF THE LARV^ IN CORN. 
Just when the southern corn root worm, or budworm, as it is termed 
in the South, first began to attack corn is involved in obscurity. The 
writer several years ago 1 called attention to the fact that it was 
probably this insect to which a Mr. Charles Yancey, 2 of Buckingham, 
Ya., referred when he described " a little white worm with copper- 
colored head " which, perforating the stalks of young corn " just be- 
low the surface of the ground," destroyed the growth. The budworm 
has certainly been accused of attacking corn in Virginia and other 
Southern Atlantic Coast States since long before the recollection of 
the oldest inhabitants. Quaintance 3 found excellent ground for be- 
lieving that the pest was injurious in the cornfields of Georgia " many 
years before we find any reference to it in the literature of economic 
entomology." The first exact observations on the ravages of the 
larva? (fig. 1, c) in growing corn, the identity of the pest being known 
at the time the observations were made, were by the writer and pub- 
lished shortly afterwards, 4 as follows : 
While in the South during the spring of 1886 we frequently heard of fields 
of young corn being seriously injured during some seasons by a small white 
worm which attacked the roots, usually during April. * * * 
On April 12 of the present year [1887] we were enabled to solve the problem 
by finding considerable numbers of these larva? in the field of corn in Tensas 
Parish, La., where they were working considerable mischief by killing the young 
1 U. S. Dept. Agi\, Insect Life. vol. 4, p. 264. 1892. 
2 American Farmer, vol. 10, p. 3, 1828. 
3 Loc. cit.. p. 36. 
4 Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for 1887, p. 148, 1S88. 
