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JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 
[Vol. 11 
History of Infestation 
During April, 1910, Air. S. C. Cobb of Anna Maria Key, Florida, 
wrote to the Secretary of Agriculture that his attention had been called 
to the condition of an orange grove in his district that might assume 
a real menace to the orange industry of Manatee County; that without 
any apparent warning worm holes began appearing about six months 
previous in the bark of the trunk and limbs of certain trees, and that 
they continued to appear, even at the time of his writing, in spite of 
the fact that as the holes appeared they were promptly filled with 
sulphur and tar, and plugged with wood. Portions of branches, sent 
later to the Bureau of Entomology, were submitted to Mr. E. A. 
Schwarz who wrote Dr. L. 0. Howard that the material “plainly 
shows that the apparently healthy wood of the orange branches in 
that section of Florida is attacked by a round-headed borer (family 
Cerambycidse, order Coleoptera). This represents to my knowledge 
a new and apparently most destructive enemy to orange trees in Flor¬ 
ida. There are only a few inside borers known among the Ceramby¬ 
cidse, and the work in the sample sent by Mr. Cobb most closely re¬ 
sembles that of our common black locust borer (Cyllene robinice). 
There is very little doubt in my mind that this new orange borer 
belongs to the same genus. Should I be correct, there is in southern 
Florida only one species of this genus capable of doing this work, viz., 
Cyllene crinicornis, a species extremely common in the West Indies 
and throughout Central America, semitropical Texas and semitropical 
Florida.” Under date of May 10, Doctor Howard wrote Mr. Cobb 
that it was Mr. Schwarz’s fear that his trees were infested by a “here¬ 
tofore unrecorded and dangerous enemy of orange.” 
Investigation of Injury 
At the request of Doctor Ploward, the writer visited Anna Maria Key 
during the later part of May, 1910. On Perico Island, a small land 
area close to Anna Maria Key, four trees were found affected by borers, 
two very seriously so, as indicated by the illustrations of plate 1. The 
remaining trees of a small grove were unaffected. The two badly 
affected trees were so damaged by the borers that their owner had cut 
back the branches to mere stubs, and was willing to grub out the trees 
that a careful examination might be made of them. 
It is doubtful if words can describe the nature of the injury better 
than the illustrations. The trees were small, scarcely seven inches in 
diameter and had evidently grown well previous to attack. The larvae 
were found making their tunnels through all portions of the wood, and 
there were no evidences that their attack was of a secondary nature. 
When young, they feed upon the inner bark and sapwood, as shown 
