t is
like. It is a little out of season. The meadow spittle bug works on
grasses and weeds. This is, we have found, a different species. This one
I brought up doesn't show as much as it would if I had collected it
three weeks ago. There is a little nymph of a sucking insect which spits
as it feeds. It doesn't chew tobacco fortunately. I got it from down
here in the bottoms of the Little Wabash River.

I first want to tell you a little of what the grower, Mr. Conrad Casper,
considers the importance of it. Now, as I say, I don't pretend to be a
specialist on nut insects. My work has been mostly with fruit insects.
Whatever I know about this insect I have learned this year, and I am
just passing on that information to you.

Mr. Casper says that in the year represented by this growth here the
spittle bug worked right into the base, and that is the one that would
have produced buds. So, instead of bearing nuts, it acts as if you have
pruned it. It didn't stop the growth, but it stopped the bearing of
nuts. That was attacked by spittle bugs, but at any rate it didn't
produce nuts. That has gone on four or five years and his neighbors all
say the same thing. Here is one year, two, three, in the twig growth.
This year it did make some nuts, in that particular branch. I am not
prepared to back everything he says. Here is a growth here, then
another, and finally had a few nuts all over the tree. So much then for
the importance of it.

My problem was three-fold. I wanted to find out what species was
involved. I found out it was not the same species that works on the
grasses, and I sent in some adults for identification. They told me the
right genus, but couldn't tell me the species. They are either in the
process of determining it or on vacation. It is a different thing from
the Meadow spittle bug and has two broods instead of one. I wanted to
learn something about the life history. All of you know that it is very
important to get the life history of the insect, because then you know
the stages in which they are most likely to be most easily killed. We
know something of the stages and when it would be of use to spray or do
something for them. In order to learn the species, I had to rear it out
and to attempt some control measures when it was first called to my
attention by the farm advisers. This first brood was about over, and I
thought our work was about over. The spittle was drying up. It is
interesting to note that unless i