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university OF FLORIDA 
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Corn borer infestation in early market sweet corn in 1939 was most 
severe in New Haven County, Conn. , whore half of the fields surveyed 
averaged 20 or more borers per plant, and in Ulster County, N. Y. , where 
half of the fields averaged 10 or more borers per plant. In New Haven 
County the average number of borers per plant was 19 . 8 and in Ulster 
County 12.6. The greatest increase of the pest in sweet corn occurred 
in Burlington County, N. J. , where an average of 0.5 borer per plant in 
193S changed to 4.2 borers in 1939* Less than half as many borers infested 
the crop in Lucas County, Ohio, in 1939. when the average number per plant 
was 8.2, as in 1938, when it was 17 • 5 • The heaviest population in early 
market sweet corn in any of the 4 counties surveyed in southwestern Maine 
in 1939 was i n York County, where there were 125 borers per 100 plants. 
The borer was less abundant in 1939 than in 193& i n white potatoes 
grown in central Connecticut and Massachusetts. Observations in 47 dahlia 
plantings in New Jersey, Long Island, and the lower Hudson Fiver Valley 
showed 2 plantings, both in New Jersey, to be heavily infested, 4 with 
medium, 10 with light, and 12 with negligible infestations, the remaining 
19 fields having no infestation. The corn borer is just becoming evident 
to growers of large plantings for commercial cut flowers in southern Now * 
Jersey and, while the damage in 1939 was found to be negligible in most 
cases, the pest could be found in most of the plantings in which it was 
not observed in previous years. 
Extremes in moisture conditions characterized the summer of 1939 
practically all sections infested by the borer, whereas fluctuations in 
temperature were, in general, less pronounced. April was the fourth con- 
secutive wet month in New Jersey and was also wet farther south along the 
Atlantic coast. The month of May was generally dry from Indiana cast to 
the New England coast and south through New Jersey to the Eastern Shore 
of Virginia, June precipitation was excessive in Ohio, Michigan, and 
Indiana, while in the more eastern States it ranged from slightly above 
to slightly below normal. Although moisture conditions in July were 
about normal in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, the weather that month in 
New York State and east through most of New England and New Jersey de- 
veloped into a serious drought. In New York dry weather continued into 
August and in Ohio that month was one of the driest Augusts on record. 
August was a month of excessive rainfall in New Jersey and New England. 
