lives near that place: “All our land that had the third crop of 
was badly used up by the white grub and corn root-worm 
y/e had two small fields, one of ten and the other of twelve acres! 
that we thought too strong for oats, which should have given us 
forty bushels per acre the present season. We got from the ten 
acre piece about twenty bushels per acre, and from the other about 
twenty-five. We had a piece of twenty acres of not quite as strong 
I land, and not as badly damaged, from which we got about twenty- 
five bushels per acre. Our sod corn saved us; we had forty ac^s 
that gave us from sixty to sixty-five bushels per acre.” The farmers 
near Waterman reported in November, that on husking their corn, 
the yield was much smaller than the stand of stalks would indicate’, 
and that the hills pulled up easily and the roots had evidently 
been eaten by the worms. In the field of Mr. Lattin, at Shabbona 
Grove, the loss was from twenty-five to fifty per cent, of the crop, 
and other fields in this vicinity were reported nearly ruined, the 
worms being in almost every instance on old corn ground. In Lit¬ 
tle Rock, the damage to one field examined was estimated at twenty 
per cent.; in another, at least twenty-five per cent, was lost. The 
same insect had been noticed in the roots of corn at Millington, in 
Kendall county, in July, 1882. 
A letter from Mr. H. W. Frazer, of Gibson, in Ford county, dated 
| December 5, reported that the worms had done him a great deal of 
(injury, as well as his neighbors, and that they were worse upon 
high ground and upon low ground that had been tiled. .In McLean 
county, near Normal and Bloomington, several fields were seen, in 
which the yield was diminished from ten to fifty per cent., as shown 
by comparison with the yield of adjacent fields not affected by the 
root-worm. The insects were likewise abundant at Arrowsmith, in 
McLean county, and Pekin, in Tazewell county, although no notes 
of injury were received from those places. 
A correspondent from Putnam county, writes under date of Sep¬ 
tember 8: “I find here a small worm one-third of an inch long or 
less, that works lengthwise of the roots of the corn, and checks its 
growth so that it does not ear well,” referring evidently to the 
species under consideration. In the vicinity of Mason City, in Mason 
•county, many fields were examined in September, several of which 
were badly infested, being worse upon high ground than on low, 
? and also, as reported, more destructive in dry seasons than in wet. 
jin Mr. Warnock’s field, near town, two-thirds of the corn was found 
destroyed, the stalks lying flat and dead with the half-formed ears 
.rotting. This corn should have yielded seventy-five bushels per acre, 
but the ground had been planted to the same grain for several years 
successively. Mr. Warnock had noticed the worms for ten or twelve 
years previously, and remembers that serious damage was done as 
,much as seven years ago. 
- Mr. D. 8. Harris, an observer upon whose accuracy I have learned 
:o rely, writes to me under date of January 8, 1888: “We have 
Pound this insect much more numerous than anticipated. We did 
lot examine a single field of corn in which its presence was not 
nore or less manifest. In some fields there would be large, rank¬ 
growing stalk's of corn which did not ear out at all. These stalks, 
upon being examined, were found to have been injured by the larvae 
