THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 77 



Recently, while on a visit to my old home in De Kalb county, North- 

 ern Illinois, the insects of which I was pretty well acquainted with twenty 

 years ago, but with which I have known little since that time, I was most 

 unexpectedly met with complaints of the Buffalo Carpet beetle, Anthrenus 

 scrophularice, unheard of there until within a few years, and which I never 

 captured there myself. 



Another newcomer was the Box Elder bug, Leptocoris trivittata, 

 which I encountered in February, crawling and flying about my room, 

 which had not been kept heated during the winter. This last was not so 

 much of a surprise, as Dr. Forbes, whose monumental works on the insects 

 of Illinois will stand as long as applied entomology itself, told me last fall 

 that it had then nearly or quite crossed the State from west to east. But 

 the thing did certainly look out of place to me where I found it. 



Of the old-time injurious species, such as occurred there thirty or 

 forty years ago, there is not one that does not occur there now, though 

 not always in such numbers. The Chinch bug, Blissus leucopterus, that 

 I remember back in the fifties, is not as destructive as of old, on account, I 

 believe, of the fact that all uncultivated grounds are now generally 

 pastured during summer, leaving no protection for the bugs during 

 winter. 



In most cases great diminution in numbers is most conspicuous 

 among such species as fed on the natural vegetation, and as the land has 

 been underdrained and brought into cultivation, these have disappeared 

 with their food-plants. Thus, Saperda mutica and Pledrodera scalator 

 have gone the way of the willows upon which they subsisted. Acmccodera 

 pulchella, formerly always common on the blossoms of Rudbeckia hirta, 

 has become far less so, as the plant has succumbed to the cultivation or 

 pasturing of the land where once they grew abundantly. 



The busy, economic entomologist has far too little time to watch these 

 things closely, but it would seem that there was here a field for such as are 

 able to withdraw from the hurry and push of professional work, and quietly 

 and carefully watch these comings and goings mid the insect world, for 

 other States than Illinois offer equally desirable fields for such observations. 

 Not only this, but we not infrequently hear complaints from those who 

 follow some line of business and study insects only as a pastime, that they 

 have no opportunity to collect outside their own narrow field, whereas, 

 here is a phase of entomological study that is really suffering for just such 

 labour as these circumscribed people can best give to it. The data obtained 



