THE SOUTHERN CORN LEAF-BEETLE. 9 
first planting having been entirely destroyed. The devastation of 
1914 was very severe but not so heavy as in 1913. 
Considerable search on cotton and wheat growing in the vicinity 
of infested cornfields near Paris, Ark., developed no damage to these 
crops. 
DISSEMINATION. 
The beetles have powerful wings and have been observed in fields 
long distances from where they originated. Especially was this true 
in one instance, during the fall of 1910, where it was positively known 
that they developed in certain bottom-land fields, later migrating 2 
miles to a field of late upland corn, where great numbers of them were 
found feeding upon the belated ears. In this last-mentioned field 
the farmer planted wheat and in the operation the drill raked up 
piles of the corn leaves, among which great numbers of the beetles 
hibernated during the followimg winter. Counts made the follow- 
ing spring, before they left hibernating quarters, indicated that about 
80 per cent of these beetles survived the winter. A lot of the dead 
beetles were kept for parasites, but no parasites developed. From 
these hibernating quarters beetles emerged in this same field in late 
March, after the weather had become warm. They were noticed 
flying in a northerly direction, though just where they went could 
not be determined. 
It does not seem to the writer that an outbreak of this insect is 
brought about by the growing of any particular crop on a certain 
field, but it would appear that an outbreak is very likely to follow 
where a field has been allowed to lie idle, especially so if allowed to grow 
cocklebur and volunteer corn for a year or more and to become very 
weedy and foul, thus affording hibernating quarters. 
The fact that adults have been found hibernating in grasslands, 
in which situation larve have never been found, indicates that they 
do not necessarily hibernate in the field in which they breed, and 
furthermore that they do fly away from their breeding grounds. 
REMEDIES. 
A great number of beetles have been taken at lights, which would 
indicate that a powerful light trap situated in the vicinity of the 
infested field might materially reduce them. In the early fall, when 
they are flying in search of hibernating quarters, it is possible that 
the light trap would catch large numbers. 
Judging from the conditions of fields in which they have been ob- 
served hibernating in large numbers, the cleaning up of all rubbish in 
the cornfields early in the fall, especially in fields for very late corn, 
would prove an effective remedy as a protection for the succeeding 
crop. The fact that large numbers were observed in the vicinity of 
cotton gins would suggest that the managers of cotton gins might use 
