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the corn be pulled up, many of the larger roots will be seen to 
be short and stubbed and rotten at the ends. On others a 
deadened brown line will be found, running irregularly length¬ 
wise, while still other roots may be dead their whole length. 
Possibly when the earth is shaken off a slender white grub will 
be discovered, two fifths of an inch long and about as thick as 
a pin; but more frequently the observer must carefully split or 
peel some of the affected roots, when a slender sinuous brown 
burrow filled with excrement will be exposed, running from one 
end of the root to the other, usually with the root worm just 
.mentioned somewhere in its course. This grub is white, except 
the head, the top of the first segment of the body, and a little 
patch on the last segment, which are yellowish brown. The body 
is smooth and cylindrical, the head is short, deep, and rounded, 
and the tip of the body is also bluntly rounded off, somewhat 
like that of a common grub. These last characters will serve to 
distinguish it from small wireworms which are often found in 
such situations, but which are usually flattened from above, es¬ 
pecially at the head, while in them the end of the body is com¬ 
monly more or less toothed or notched or pointed. The grubs 
or larvae of several small flies will often be found about the roots 
of corn, and careless or unskilled observers have occasionally 
mistaken these for the corn root worm, but this latter insect 
has six short legs on the three segments just behind the head, 
while the grubs of flies are footless. We have seen as many as 
fifteen or twenty to a hill, and I do not doubt that in fields 
heavily attacked they are much more numerous. As the root 
dies, however, it is forsaken and another is attacked, until, not 
unfrequently, almost every root will become infested as fast as 
it puts forth. This damage may thus extend to the practical 
destruction of the entire root growth, and the consequent death 
of the plant; or it may remain miserably dwarfed, six inches, 
perhaps, when other plants measure four or five feet. If the 
stem is perforated above the roots, the injury is probably due 
to the southern root worm or to some of the species of wire- 
worms, which one can only be told by finding the insect itself. 
Attention may perhaps be first attracted when the corn is 
putting forth the silk, by the extraordinary number of barren 
stalks upon which no ear is forming, or stalks may be seen 
which have scarcely life enough to tassel. It may also be ob¬ 
served that the corn is unaccountably late, looking evidently 
greener and younger than other fields "which had no advantage 
at the start. Or injury may be first suspected during a period 
of drouth, patches here and there, or the entire field, suffering 
unduly from this cause. The most conspicuous evidence of this 
injury, however, at this stage of growth, is the prostration of 
the corn after a soaking rain with wind, and the evident inabil¬ 
ity of the plant to right itself. If one of the worst affected stalks 
be pulled up, the observer will notice that the roots are few in 
number, that many of them are withered and brown, and that 
others are rotted away to stubs. In these discolored roots the 
