PREFACE. 
V 
or the timber of farm-buildings have come under notice, as 
likewise the sometimes serious injuries to crops in field or garden 
from pests, such as Slugs, Snails, Millepedes or False Wireworms, 
and Wood-lice. 
The five kinds of insects noticed which had either not been 
recorded as present in England until 1889, or been only recently 
observed, were the Plum “ Shot-borer” Beetles ( Xyleborus dispar ); 
the “White Woolly Currant Scale” ( Pulvinaria ribesice); the 
“Turnip Mud-beetle” ( Helophorus rugosus); the Saddle Fly (a 
Cecidomyia agreeing in such points as could be traced previous 
to development of the perfect insect with the habits of the 
Diplosis equestris); and the Flour Moth (Ephestia Kuhniella ), an 
infestation calling for the promptest attention as a perfect 
scourge in Steam Wheat Flour Mills, and wherever it may gain 
possession in town or farm wheat flour or meal stores. 
Some of our common Corn pests were remarkably little 
reported on in the past year (speaking, of course, of observations 
sent to myself), as Corn Sawfly, Corn Aphis, and the Red Maggot 
of the Wheat Midge; and Beet Carrion Beetle, which was first 
recorded as injurious to Mangolds in England in 1888, was not 
noticed in 1889. 
* 
Hessian Fly was reported to me reliably from about nine 
English localities, but of these fully half the notices only referred 
to it as present on special farms; and though reported as very 
prevalent, that is, as occurring on a large proportion of the 
straws of infested fields, yet it appeared, both from specimens 
and information sent, that the infestation often amounted to no 
more than the presence of one, or sometimes two maggots on 
the attacked straws. The damage was noticed in several instances 
as being slight, and the highest estimates of loss sent me were 
respectively of “several bushels” per acre on one 58-acre field, 
and of an amount not exceeding four per cent, per acre in any 
case on the farm of the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester. 
During the past year sound advance has been made in general 
attention to reasonable and practicable methods of prevention 
(or of lessening amount of loss from ravages of insects), based on 
plain knowledge of their habits, and of meeting the requisite 
points, by agricultural measures, good for the crop, as well as 
% injurious to the insect-pest. 
