222 
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 
[Vol. 13 
A CONNECTICUT CORNFIELD INJURED BY CRAMBUS 
PRjEFECTELLUS ZINCK. 
By W. E. Britton, State Entomologist, New Haven, Conn. 
The cornfield in which this injury occurred is between one and 
one-half acres in extent, and is situated on Townsend Avenue, New 
Haven, only three or four miles from the center of the city. It was in 
grass in 1918, and was plowed in the spring of 1919 and planted to 
corn. 
When only a few inches high, the plants began to look sickly and 
the outer leaves turned yellow, then shrivelled and died. The new 
leaves kept green for a time with the outer ones dead and brown, but 
the entire plant soon died. 
At the base of each unthrifty plant a cavity or hole had been eaten 
into one side of the stem, often to its center. This injury was just at 
the surface of the ground or slightly above, and the grayish larva 
causing it was covered by a case formed of soil particles webbed 
together by silk threads, somewhat resembling small ant sheds. 
Apparently there was only one larva to each stalk, and when disturbed, 
the larva would quickly wriggle out of sight into crevices in the soil. 
Moreover the case or covering at first escaped notice because all of 
the plants were more or less spattered with dirt, and it was rather 
difficult to pull up a plant without losing the larva and its case. 
On July 3, Mr. L. F. Harvey, county agricultural agent for New 
Haven County, first brought some of the injured plants to the Station 
laboratory. 
Mr. M. P. Zappe, assistant entomologist, visited the field with 
Mr. Harvey the same afternoon and examined the plants and gathered 
more material. Later, on July 10, the writer visited the field. An 
occasional plant had escaped attack and was consequently much 
larger, darker green, and more vigorous than the other plants in the 
field. At that time there were many hills where all of the plants had 
been killed, and most of those remaining looked as if they would soon 
die. A few hills at the ends of the rows near the Avenue were not 
attacked and later I learned that these and occasional scattered stalks 
produced ears, probably less than a hundred all together, and the crop 
was almost a total failure. 
At the time, this insect was supposed to be the corn web-worm 
Crambus caliginosellus Clem., a common species which injures corn in 
the middle and southern Atlantic states, and as all members of the 
force were busy with other work, no careful studies were made. 
From the material gathered there emerged about September 1, four 
adults, which have since been identified at the Bureau of Entomology 
