If you will kindly inform me how to remedy this looseness of the kernel I will agree to show you how 100 bushels of corn can be raised on one acre every good corn year.
Horace Hopkins.
Desplaines, Ill., Jan. 2.
We sent this communication to Professor Forbes, State Entomologist and received the following reply:
Editor Prairie Farmer—There can be hardly a shadow of a doubt that the injury which your correspondent so graphically describes is due to the corn root-worm (Diabrotica longicornis), a full account of which will be found in my report for 1882, published last November.
The clue to his whole difficulty lies in the sentence, "I plant my corn every year on the same ground." As the beetles from which the root-worms descend lay their eggs in corn fields in autumn, and as these eggs do not hatch until after corn planting in the following spring, a simple change of crops for a single year, inevitably starves the entire generation to death in the ground.
I inclose a slip, giving a brief account of this most grievous pest; but the article in my last report already referred to will be found more satisfactory.
S. A. Forbes.
Normal, Ill., January 3.
P.S.—You will probably remember that I published a paper on this insect in The Prairie Farmer for December 30, 1882.