pa oP 
Fred E. Brooks, in charge of the field laboratory at French Creek, 
W. Va., visited a number of chestnut growers in Pennsylvania, Maryland, 
Delaware, and Virginia, June 5 to 14, gathering data to use in a study of 
the chestnut curculio. 
Oliver I. Snapp gave an address on control of peach insects before 
the Rotary Club in Americus, Ga., on May 29. The peach growers of Sumter 
County, Ga., were guests of the club for that occasion, 
H. S, Swingle, who has been engaged in investigations of peach insects 
at the field laboratory at Fort Valley, Ga., for the past four years, Tre= 
signed on June 39 to accept a position with the Department of Entomology at 
Alabama Polytechnic Institute. 
Howard Evarts Weed, formerly engaged in entomological work, and 
known as the inventor of the "Kero Water" spray pump, which was much used 
in the early days of the San Jose scale, was a recent caller at the Bureau 
of Entomology. He is now engaged in landscape work in Portland, Oreg. 
Contributions from the Japanese-Beetle Laboratory 
Four large shipments of parasites of the Japanese beetle have been 
received this month from T. R. Gardner, of the field laboratory at Yokohama, 
Japan. Two of these shipments consisted of beetle larvae parasitized by 
the dexiids Prosena siberita and Dexia ventralis. Few people appreciate 
the work and expense entailed in preparing this material for shipment; for 
example, in the case of Prosena, the female flies have first to be caught, 
and are then dissected under a binocular microscope and the minute larvae 
within the larval sac are placed, two or three in number, on the grubs of 
the host Popillia. These minute larvae almost immediately enter their host. 
The grubs are stored in "grub plots" out of doors for the winter, and ship— 
ment is made the following spring. Much painstaking labor is thus required, 
all of which is expensive in time and money. Such a.shipment as that re— 
ceived here this spring, consisting of some 20,000 parasitized grubs packed 
in a minimum of sterile soil, weighs 3,000 pounds, and the express charge 
from Seattle to Moorestown alone was $300.11. The other two shipments of 
parasites consisted of adults of Tiphia vernalis. The wasps, which are na— 
tives of Korea, are shipped in tins provided with all the necessities of 
life. The shipments this year arrived in remarkably fine condition. The 
first, of 5,285 wasps, came through with 86.5 per cent alive and in good 
condition. The second shipment, which consisted of older adults (some 
5,700 in number), arrived with 64.7 per cent alive. 
