Nutritional studies (House, 1954, a-d; House and Barlow, 1956) with the sarcophagid Pseudosarcophaga affinis (Fall.) have been in progress for a number of years at the Belleville laboratory. Recently a new technique was developed for the care of large numbers of small lots of P. affinis. This makes use of a convenient holder for larval rearing tubes; a cage assembly for rearing pupae and flies; and a rack to hold a large number of cages, each easily accessible and uniformly illuminated, in a minimum of space. When this equipment is used, the treatment of the insects is more uniform and less time-consuming than with the equipment previously used. The new technique and equipment are described in this paper.

This paper describes the seasonal history and habits of the less important red pine cone insects, and presents notes on the predators, scavengers, and other insects that commonly inhabit infested cones. During 1950-1954, Eucosma monitorana Hein., Laspeyresia toreuta Groté, and Rubsaamenia sp. were rarely as abundant as the cone beetle, Conophthorus resinosae Hopk., (10) or Dioryctria spp. (11), although they contributed significantly to seed loss. Owing to the scarcity of these insects, some of the life history details remain incomplete.

Work undertaken in connection with Mr. C. P. Kimball's projected list of Florida Lepidopera has revealed a number of problems in the North American species usually referred to Diasemia Hübner ([1824-25] p. 348), type Pyralis literalis Denis and Schiffermüller (=Phalaena litterata Scopoli) (Figs. 1, 2). A structural study shows that these species belong to five groups, generically distinct from one another and from the type species of Diasemia. Diasemia alaskalis Gibson (Fig. 3) is congeneric with Udea ferrugalis (Hübner) and should be known as Udea alaskalis (Gibson), new combination. I have characterized the genus Udea Guenée in an earlier paper (Munroe, 1950). Diasemia plumbosignalis Fernald (Fig. 10) and related species belong to the genus Choristostigma Warren, 1892: 440. The species of Choristostigma will be discussed in a separate publication. Diasemia magdalena Fernald and an undescribed species belong to the genus Daulia Walker (1859: 975) hitherto known from the tropics of the Old World and from Argentina. Hydrocampa ramburialis Duponchel and Desmia? janassialis Walker require new genera.

In 1947 and 1948 brown foliage on arborvitae trees caused by leaf miners became increasingly noticeable in New Brunswick. Since the literature contained little information on the miners this study was undertaken in 1950 to obtain information on their biology, control, and effect on the host tree. Part of the study dealing with the separation of the four species of leaf miners, Argyresthia thuiella (Pack.), A. freyella Wlshm., A. aureoargentella Brower, and Recurvaria thujaella Kft., is being published as a separate paper (7). This paper is concerned with the life-history and associated studies.

Experimental aerial spraying by Butcher (3), Butcher and Eaton (4) and Peterson (7) has been described; but potency tests of the synthetic organic insecticides against the larch sawfly, Pristiphora erichsonii (Htg.), have not been reported.

The first screening tests were carried out in 1955 at Cass Lake, Minn., with DDT, chlordane, methoxychlor, benzene hexachloride (BHC) and malathion against larvae of each of the five different instars. High temperatures in the field laboratory killed an inordinately large proportion of the control insects, making interpretation of the test data hazardous. Examination of the data indicated that BHC and malathion were the only promising toxicants. Work was continued by the author at Cass Lake in 1956 with these insecticides as well as with DDT, which has been used frequently against forest defoliators.

Much of the losses due to insects in stored grain occur when infestations remain unnoticed because of infrequent or inadequate sampling, There is clearly a need for a simple, sensitive method of indicating the presence of insects in stored grain before they become sufficiently numerous to occur in grain samples.

At the Winnipeg laboratory, jars of water are sometimes used to increase the relative humidity above wheat containing cultures of rhe rusty grain beetle, Laemophloeus ferrugineus Steph. The fact that adults were often trapped in the water suggested a method of detecting insect infestations in stored grain. This paper reports field and laboratory experiments on the general usefulness of a water-trap to detect insects in stored grain.