34 
"where the ground was a little broken by small hollows. They were very 
numerous in this vicinity that season, and occasionally there have been 
a few of them since, but not doing much damage until the present sea- 
son. In one field of mine, which had been pastural two years before 
breaking, they have almost entirely taken up 4 or 5 acres, so that I have 
planted a part of it with white beans, and contemplate sowing the bal- 
ance with buckwheat. 
“I think they are produced by a small, whitish miller, with dirty, 
brownish stripes upou it, as I have seen a great many of them about 
the fields. They made their appearance about the time the worms com- 
menced their depredations. I also saw a great many about ou the first 
"visitation of the ‘ web-worms , 7 and supposed at the time that they were 
the authors of the mischief . 77 * * * [B. F. Ferris, Sunman. Ind ., 
■July 4, 1885. 
^VIONEPHORA BICINCTA DAMAGING BERMUDA GRASS. [Plate I, fig. 
^3.] — This rather striking looking bug, belonging to the family Cercopidse, 
and easily recognizable from its marked coloration, is widely distributed 
and by no means rare over the more southern portion of the country, but 
has never been reported as injuring cultivated plants. This season, how- 
ever, a large number of specimens were received from Hon. A. P. But- 
ler, Commissioner of Agriculture of the State of South Carolina, dated 
Columbia, October 20, in which he stated that they appeared in 1884 
on the farm of Mr. Speigner, on the Congaree Eiver, near Columbia, 
and destroyed a small patch of Bermuda grass. This year it again ap 
peared in large numbers on the same farm, and completely ruined a 
10-acre field of the same grass. Major Butler examined the field in 
person, and states that it looked as if a fire had passed over it, while 
thousands of the bugs w'ere found. This exceptional increase of the 
insect is of considerable interest. The best remedy will be found in 
burning over the field in the fall. 
A new Enemy to the Persimmon. — Mr. C. W. Johnson, of Saint 
Augustine, Fla., wrote us, June 23, concerning the work of an insect 
which punctured twigs of Persimmon and layed its eggs, from which 
^ithe larvrn hatched and bored into the heart wood. The specimens were 
^recognized as Oberea bimaculata , a beetle which customarily lays its 
aeggs in Raspberry or Blackberry, but which we have also observed to 
oviposit in Cottonwood. It has never before been recorded as injuring 
Persimmon. Oberea schaumii, a closely related species, we have also 
observed on Cottonwood, and Mr. Schwarz has found it ovipositing in 
Sassafras. 
The Black Scale of California ( Lecanium olece Bernard). — This 
^destructive scale was treated of in the Annual Report of the Depart- 
ment for 1880, pp. 336-337, but little beyond structural details was given 
We have received the past season a few notes concerning it from Mr. 
