October, ’24] 
wymore: garden centipede 
521 
perature, comparative darkness, and an undisturbed—at least unculti¬ 
vated—soil.” 
He also suspected that the garden centipedes fed partially upon 
vegetable matter and conducted certain feeding experiments. One of 
these showed that in captivity the animals survived much better when 
kept in an environment of damp, decayed leaves. In his summary and 
conclusions, however, he states, li Scutigerella is probably carnivorous.” 
In certain localities in California, Oregon and Utah evidence of their 
feeding habits and their habitat in cultivated fields is plain enough. 
Scutigerella immaculata (Newport) has proven to be a real pest to as¬ 
paragus in California on the various islands in the Delta section of the 
Sacramento River. Asparagus growers report that twenty years ago 
several fields of asparagus on Grand Island had to be plowed out be¬ 
cause of these animals which were wrongly supposed to be wireworms. 
The first published account of the garden centipede work appeared in 
Bulletin 165, California Agricultural Experiment Station, April, 1905. 
This bulletin includes an illustration showing the nature of the damage 
done to asparagus shoots and a description of the pest under the name 
wireworms. 
The first record we have of economic injury directly attributed to this 
pest is a paper by Woodworth (1905). In this paper he describes the 
centipede as a new species, Scolopendrella californica. 1 Quoting from 
the above paper, “It was first noticed, as far as can be learned, some 
three or four years ago in the large asparagus fields on Boldin Island 
and about Sacramento, and proved to be a pest of a very serious kind.” 
In the winter of 1912-1913 the asparagus farmers of the Delta section 
of the Sacramento River urgently appealed to the University of Cali¬ 
fornia for assistance in controlling the garden centipede. Much work 
was done at this time by E. R. deOng in testing out repellents and soil 
fumigants of which carbon disulfid proved effective but was not practical. 
No further attempt was made to control this centipede until the fall of 
1922. At this time another urgent appeal for assistance in controlling 
% 
this pest was made to the Division of Entomology and Parasitology by 
the asparagus farmers of the Delta country, representing approximately 
forty thousand acres of asparagus. To the writer was assigned the 
1 In a letter from Dr. R. V. Chamberlin, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cam¬ 
bridge, Mass., concerning specimens of the symphylids sent to him from California, 
he states, “These specimens are Scutigerella immaculata (Newport). I find no vari¬ 
ations that I regard as significant in comparison with typical representatives from 
Europe.” 
