REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST IQI7 59 
of the tobacco preparation should be used to saturate the upper 
layers of the soil. . 
The wingless beetles feed, as indicated above, on a variety of 
plants. Owing to the fact that they must crawl from one to another 
before depositing eggs which develop into destructive grubs, it 
should be comparatively easy to prevent injury to annual potted 
plants by making it impossible for crawling insects to get from 
infested permanent plants to the others. Bands of tree tanglefoot 
have proved most effective barriers against various crawling insects 
and it should not be difficult to protect individual beds or series 
of beds with this material. The probabilities are, in some green- 
houses at least, that the pests make their way from some of the 
more permanent plants which show comparatively little injury to 
the smaller potted ones. Consequently if the latter can be so placed 
on isolated benches or in separate ranges that crawling insects can 
not make their way to them, the difficulty may be solved in large 
measure. 
Seed corn maggot (Pe gomyia fusciceps Zett.). The work 
of the seed corn maggot in bean fields began to be apparent the last 
of June and continued well into July. The small, whitish maggots 
about one-fourth of an inch long when full grown were associated 
with general and serious injury to beans, producing “ bald heads ”’ 
and eating long channels (plate 3) in the stems. The tendency 
of the grower was to blame the insects for all this damage, though 
subsequent investigations have satisfied us that in large measure 
the difficulty was due to abnormal weather conditions and a system 
of planting not adapted to an excessively wet soil, thus producing 
an environment favorable for the development of this insect. An 
examination of a number of fields in different parts of the State 
clearly demonstrated that the mischief was restricted very largely, if 
not entirely, either to excessively wet land or to fields where planting 
was too deep for the amount of moisture in the soil. In other words, 
if there had been more shallow planting or a less saturated soil, there 
would have been comparatively little trouble from this insect. 
The following figures give some idea of the situation. The loss 
on seed alone in one g acre field in Genesee county amounted to 
$70, while from 50 to 75 per cent of the stand on 16 acres was 
destroyed. One Monroe county grower lost $300 on seed alone. 
The damage for Erie county was placed at 40 per cent and it was 
estimated that one-fourth of $96,000 worth of seed was destroyed in 
Orleans county. The work of this insect was reported from eighteen 
