February, ’20] 
FELT: EUROPEAN CORN BORER 
71 
2. The development and maintenance of adequate scouting forces 
for the purpose of quickly determining the limits of the various infested 
sections and also for making special examinations in any particularly 
suspicious areas. 
Scouting is a most valuable supplement to publicity and the two 
should be worked together if the best results are to be secured. The 
Federal Bureau of Entomology already has a number of scouts at work 
in various parts of the country. There are difficulties in securing 
enough. 
3. The speedy organization of a clean-up campaign for the more 
western areas. 
This is designed primarily to destroy the wintering borers in corn¬ 
stalks and weed stems in cornfields in particular. It is a direct and a 
fairly effective method of keeping the infestation down to the mini¬ 
mum, and appears to be of prime importance in checking the west¬ 
ward spread of the borer. 
4. A measurable regulation of corn planting in the infested areas 
next year as follows: 
(a) Plant throughout the infested territory small plots of early 
corn designed to attract the moths. 
(b) Destroy such early plantings before the borers attain maturity 
in localities where conditions justify such action. 
It is comparatively easy in late July or early August to locate the 
work of the borer in sparsely infested areas. Scouting territory where 
there is but one brood at this time and the prompt destruction of the 
occasional infested hills appears to the writer as a promising method 
of not only locating the limits of infestation but of restricting spread. 
A splendid opportunity to test its efficiency was missed last season 
because of the expected development of a second brood in New York 
state. 
(c) Plant the greater part of the corn crop two or three weeks later 
than the very early corn and in this manner avoid infestation to a 
large degree. 
The immunity of somewhat late planted corn in the Schenectady 
area was most striking, even in adjacent fields and with the same 
variety. 
(d) Prohibit in all infested areas the growing, within fifty feet of 
early corn, of celery and other garden crops liable to be infested and 
commonly transported by commercial agencies. 
There have been to the writer’s knowledge no extensive tests of 
possibilities along this line and before we conclude that the insect can¬ 
not be controlled and prevented from establishing itself in the corn 
belt, we believe that some such methods should be tried over an ex- 
