16 BULLETIN 1248, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
observed to feed voluntarily on many plants, especially when their 
favorite food has been destroyed or has become scarce. Among 
these plants are the following: Velvet bean, kudzu, crimson clover, 
white clover (Pl. IX, B), corn, grasses, okra (Pl. VIII, A), eggplant, 
potato, squash, mung bean (Phaseolus aureus), and weeds. None 
of these plants has ever been severely damaged. Adults have also 
been taken feeding on Galactia volubilis and Lespedeza virginica. In 
the fall volunteer feeding on kudzu is not uncommon, while trials 
earlier in the year to breed the insect on this host have been fruitless. 
Feeding on mung bean (Phaseolus aureus) is very rare, and only 
one instance of feeding on wild morning-glory (Jpomoea sp.) has been 
observed, under unusual conditions. The insect does not normally 
feed on sweet potato or peanut. Information relative to the prefer- 
ence of the beetle for snap beans, both pole and bush, compared with 
Lima beans, cowpeas, and soy beans, may be gained from the reports 
on field scouting, most of which was done in sections where infestation 
was light. These reports show a decided preference of the beetle for 
the garden bean over the Lima bean, that the cowpea is far removed 
from either of these, and that the latter is preferred to soy bean. In 
south Georgia beggarweed (Meibomia tortuosa) is preferred to cow- 
pea, this plant being infested with all stages of the insect when cowpea 
is scarcely infested. 
The problem of food plants of the Mexican bean beetle is not the 
same in the Southeast as in the West and Southwest. Not only does 
the problem concern the grower of susceptible crops, but it has an 
important bearing on the policy to be follomed regarding quarantine 
and extermination policies. The fact that a number of new food 
plants came under observation immediately after investigation of the 
problem is evidently explamed by the fact that the insect acts differ- 
ently under new climatic conditions. Obviously, also, some appar- 
ently new habits may be of old standing. 
Soon after the avidity of the beetle for beggarweed or beggartick 
(Meibomia tortuosa) in southern Georgia was reported by Luther 
Brown, the same facts were independently discovered in Mexico by 
Prof. H. F. Wickham, while employed by the Bureau of Entomology. 
Similar observations were made in northern Alabama by J. R. 
Douglass and the writers and subsequently in Mexico in 1922 by 
E.G.Smyth. Itis therefore probable that Meibomia has been a host 
plant for many years. In 1920, when the bean beetle was first 
reported in northern Alabama, cowpea and soy bean were observed 
as food plants. Adults were first observed feeding on soy bean, in 
Colorado, by A. E. Mallory, Bureau of Entomology, in 1919. The 
greater variety and accessibility of leguminous food plants in the 
southeastern part of the United States, together with the abnormal 
abundance of the insect, has probably been the chief cause of changes 
of habit and new observations of old habits. In trucking sections 
in the Southeast cowpeas are often raised as a truck crop for human 
consumption in the green stage. In many such instances severe 
damage has been done to this crop. In a number of cases marked 
injury to fields of cowpea of considerable size has occurred, but 
always in a section where the infestation on garden beans has been 
extremely heavy. 
A decided preference is shown by the Mexican bean beetle for 
‘“pinto’’ and tepary beans. In 1921 pinto, or Rosello spotted, beans 
