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JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 
[Vol. 13 
comprehending Charleston and much of the adjacent area of James Island and a con¬ 
siderable scope of the mainland across the Ashley River from Charleston. The truck¬ 
ers claim that the insect had appeared about five years ago or about 1914 and had 
rapidly increased in destructiveness until some truckers had been forced to abandon 
some of the chief crops of that region, among them spinach, carrots, beets, and lettuce. 
The cabbage industry is being seriously threatened at the present time. Poisoned 
baits were used as in the case of the Florida infestation, but without success. The 
failure can be attributed to the lateness of the season, as the baits were not applied 
immediately and the insects did not seem to feed at all during the latter part of Octo¬ 
ber and later. 
In looking over the correspondence of the Bureau of Entomology, the writer finds 
that this species was reported in two other localities in South Carolina in earlier years. 
October 1, 1915, Mr. T. R. Hamlin, Mount Pleasant, S. C., sent specimens, stating 
that the insect was a pest in seed beds and that he had been fighting a losing game 
with them for years. “Unlike our common destructive insects, the mole-crickets,” 
he writes, “work in the open and infest the well-cultivated seed beds, causing during 
two or three previous seasons a 60 per cent loss.” They were also described as de¬ 
stroying the tender shoots. The specimens in this case were identified by Mr. A. N. 
Caudell. March 1, 1917, Mr. R. H. Adams, Navy Yard, Charleston, S. C., reported 
this species feeding on seeds and young plants in that vicinity, but the specimens 
sent were immature and a positive identification could not be made at that time. 
This species, it should be added, is best known in literature as Scapteriscus didacty- 
lus Latr. 
F. H. Chittenden, 
Bureau of Entomology , U. S. Department of Agriculture. 
