REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST 1 99 



Recent studies upon this insect have shown that the account of its 

 hibernation, as given by me in my Second Report, page 154, based on 

 eadier writers and followed by later ones, is incorrect and misleading in its 

 suggestion of useless methods of dealing with it. 



Mr. C. L. Marlatt, of the Division of Entomology at Washington, in 

 an article on "The Hibernation of the Chinch-Bug," published in Insect 

 Life, vii, 1894, pp. 232-234, states as follows: " In every account of the 

 chinch-bug which I have seen, stress has been placed on the hibernation 

 of the adult in rubbish of any sort, such as thick matted grass of head- 

 lands and unmown places, piles of corn fodder, hay piles, or about hay- 

 stacks, dried leaves under trees, particularly in hedgerows, or any other 

 like situation. In the course of very careful and extended investigations 

 carried on in Kansas during a year of excessive chinch-bug abundance, I 

 failed entirely to find any basis for the above supposition. Repeated 

 careful search throughout the late fall and winter failed to discover a sin- 

 gle living chinch-bug in any such situations, even when such supposedly 

 favorable hibernating conditions occurred in and adjoining fields which 

 were alive with chinch-bugs late in the fall." He further found "what is 

 probably the normal hibernating place of the chinch-bug, in the dense 

 stools of certain of the wild grasses, such as the blue-stem and other sorts, 

 perhaps including tame varieties which incline to the stooling habit. In 

 these situations only were chinch-bugs found during the winter, and so 

 numerously that a single stool of grass would contain hundreds of these 

 insects." 



Mr. Marlatt points out, in consideration of this pecuharity of hiberna- 

 tion, the futility of the usual recommendations for lessening injury of the 

 insect, such as burning up all loose rubbish about farms and in fence cor- 

 ners, and leaves in hedgerows, and the removal of hedges. Instead of 

 these, the burning over of grass lands where the hibernation occurs, at 

 once suggests itself. To be successful the burning should be done after 

 a prolonged dry spell, and preferably in midwinter, after a succession of 

 warm days, during which the bugs would be drawn by tlie warmth nearer 

 to the surface, where they would be more readily reached by the fire. 



