THE ENTOMOLOGICAL RECORD FOR 1885-86, 
To tlie economic entomologist the season of 1885 was especially 
notable for an extraordinary outbreak, in the western part of the 
State, of two or three of our common species of grasshoppers; 
and 1886 was distinguished by a disastrous attack of the chinch 
bug on the wheat, oats, and corn of Southern Illinois, which, to¬ 
gether with a severe drouth, greatly diminished the crops of small 
grain and hay over several counties, and completely destroyed the 
corn in hundreds of fields. The grasshopper uprising having now 
disappeared, a full account of it is given elsewhere; but a discus¬ 
sion of the chinch-bug attack may best be postponed until another 
report, when its complete history may probably be written, 
The European cabbage worm (Pieris rupee) has clearly been 
less abundant during the past two years throughout that part of 
the State under our observation than for several years preced¬ 
ing. The same scarcity was noted by some of my correspondents. 
Dr. Goding, for example, writing from Livingston county on the 
24th July, 1885, reported that it was difficult to find a single 
cabbage worm in the field; and Dr. Boardman, in August, 1885, 
informed me that these insects were very much less abundant in 
Stark county than usual. This difference, so favorable to the 
horticulturist, was due apparently to the continued prevalence of 
the white plague of the cabbage worm,—a destructive disease first 
reported by me in September, 1883, and described in full in the 
Bulletin of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History, Yol. 
II., Art. IV., pp. 261-264. Numerous examples of its extraordinary 
destructiveness occurred in the course of our observations. Visit¬ 
ing a cabbage field near Champaign late in August, 1885, the 
owner of which had reported a few days previously that it was 
being destroyed by the cabbage worm, we failed to find in twenty 
minutes’ search a single living larva, the leaves being, however, 
badly riddled, and the dried and blackened remnants of the dead 
cabbage worms giving unmistakable evidence of their recent pres¬ 
ence. 
