SUBFAMILY XIII. CALANDRIN.E. 551 



ish coating, thorax with three black stripes. Beak three-fourths the length 

 of thorax, sparsely and finely punctate and grooved at base above. Thorax 

 longer than wide, sides feebly curved, slightly constricted near apex; 

 disc very sparsely and finely punctate. Elytra slightly narrowed toward 

 apex, striae very fine, remotely punctured; intervals flat, each with a single 

 row of distant punctures. Body beneath sparsely punctate. Length 10 11 

 mm. 



Recorded from St. Augustine, Fla. Schwarz (1889, 2) says 

 that "the occurrence of this species at St. Augustine is of great 

 interest, since it was previously known only from southern Ari- 

 zona and New Mexico. It adds another instance of a curious 

 geographical distribution, viz., the simultaneous occurrence of 

 certain species in the extreme southwestern and southeastern 

 parts of North America." 



III. SPHENOPHORUS Schon., 1838. (Gr., "wedge" + "to bear.") 

 Bather large, robust, usually elliptic-ovate species having the 

 body glabrous, often covered with a clayey artificial coat so as to 

 hide the sculpture, more rarely with a dense natural glabrous 

 coating ; antenna? inserted near base of beak, scape long, slender, 

 f unicle six-jointed ; club wedge-shaped, convex in front, the outer 

 third or more sensitive (Fig. 10) ; beak shorter than thorax, rather 

 slender, feebly curved, swollen at base; antennal grooves very 

 short, fovea-like, located close to eyes; thorax longer than wide, 

 its disc usually with elevated smooth lines or spaces; elytra 

 usually wider than thorax, their tips separately broadly rounded, 

 thus widely exposing the pygidium. 



The corn bill-bugs (or "elephant bugs"), as the species of 

 SpJienophorus are commonly called, pass the winter in the imago 

 stage among dead leaves and rubbish, and lay eggs early in the 

 following summer, beginning probably in May. The larvae hatch 

 in June, feed on the bulbous roots of grasses and grass-like plants, 

 including corn, pass into the pupal stage in July, and begin 

 to emerge as imagoes late in July, continuing into August and 

 possibly for some time thereafter. The normal food plants are 

 wild grasses, especially those with bulbous roots, and injury to 

 crops of timothy and corn occurs mainly where swamp lands are 

 broken up in spring and planted to corn the same year, or where 

 from poor cultivation the bulb-root grasses are allowed to grow 

 up again, or old timothy sod is plowed in spring and planted im- 

 mediately to corn. The best remedy is plowing in fall before the 

 time for insect hibernation to begin.* 



*For literature pertaining to their economic phases see the papers by Forbes, loc. 

 cit. ; also Bulls. 79 and 95, 111. Agr. Exp. Sta. and Bull. 95, Pts. II and IV, U. S. Bur. 

 Entoiu. 



