OCR Text |
Show PARASITES MAY HELP T COMBAT BORER PEST : Introduction of Enemies of Pest Progressing Rapidly. ! Government Agents in France Have Been Constantly Collecting Insect Which Are to Be Liberated In New England. The work of Introducing the natural enemies of the corn borer from Europe made rapid strides during the last fiscal year, according to the report of the bureau of entomology of the United Uni-ted States Department of Agriculture. Agents at Hyeres, southern Frunce, have been almost constantly collecting arid shipping insect parasites of the corn borej to America, where these have been assorted and reared, to be subsequently liberated in large numbers num-bers in the heavily infested regions of New England. More than 500,000 specimens of a single species of parasite para-site were liberated In this manner during the summer of 1922, and thousands thou-sands of Individuals of several other kinds were also liberated in this region. re-gion. The present plans of the bureau Include In-clude the continuation of this work, in order to insure, where possible, the establishment of all available beneficial bene-ficial insect enemies of the pest before be-fore It becomes widely distributed throughout the United States. With this in view, what promises to be successful suc-cessful steps have been taken to establish estab-lish one species of these parasites on native corn borers in the South Atlantic Atlan-tic and Gulf states and on the sugar cane borer in Louisiana so that this enemy may be present and ready to attack the pest in case the European corn borer should spread to those regions. |