-654- 
"During the year 1931, the newly introduced wireworm Heteroderes lau- 
rentii Guer. has proven quite an economic pest in the trucking' section of 
southern Alabama. The early Irish potato crop, particularly, suffered 
severe injury. A great nercentage of this croTD was loaded for market with 
shipping point certification "by the Bureau of Markets. Their reports 
showed injury as high as 25 per cent to many cars of Irish potatoes. From 
3 to 5 per cent was quite common during the main portion of the shipping 
season. Other crops were also damaged. Both larvae and adults were found 
very numerous in Mobile and Baldwin Counties, Ala. Many fields show a 
population of as many as 10 larvae- to the square foot. During the year 
scouting has shown the distribution of the insect at this time as follows: 
Harrison, Jackson, George, and Green Counties, Miss.; Mobile, Baldwin, 
Washington, and Escambia Counties, Ala.; Escambia and Santa Eosa Counties, 
Ela. Larvae, tentatively identified as this species, have also been col- 
lected in "Wr>? ' ">n. ;T^ / "kpc v Ti. ar*? tt'-Itt-o*. fl,nv^M^ p tp- ^ n -\ 
EUROPEAN CORN BORER . . 
The European corn borer ( Pyrausta nubilalis Hbn. ) made but slight ad- 
vance along its western border. Toward the southeast the advance was more 
pronounced. Practically all of southeastern New Jersey is now known to be 
infested, and infestations have been found on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. 
This insect was also found in a single township in Sheboygan County, Wis. 
HESSIAN FLY 2 
During the early spring months, reports of rather heavy infestations 
by the Hessian fly ( Phytophaga destructor Say) were received from western 
and southeastern Iowa, while the insect was reported at' this time as being 
comparatively scarce in the Atlantic States. As the spring advanced serious 
infestations were reported from western Illinois and parts of the Platte 
Valley in Nebraska. In Henderson County, 111., considerable wheat areas 
were plowed out, since infestations in this region ran from 32 to 40 per 
cent of the tillers. The spring wheat in the Willamette Valley of Oregon 
was also reported as quite heavily infested this year. At harvest time it 
was observed that the insect was low in numbers in the East Central States, 
with serious infestations in western and southern Illinois, southern Indi- 
ana, and scattered localities in Nebraska and Kansas. The summer wheat- 
stubble surveys showed that in west-central and southern Illinois the in- 
festations were decidedly heavy, running from 5 to 37 per cent. The 
State average, however, was lower than last year, being 9 per cent as com- 
pared with 13 per cent. Similar surveys in Kansas show infestations in 
the eastern two-thirds of the State of from 10 to 15 per cent of the plants. 
t K. L. Cockerham, Bureau of Entomology, U. S. D. A. 
2 Revised and amplified by C. M. Packard 4 
