INSECTS INJURIOUS TO CORN. 



287 



bers of this family. The mouth parts are situated on the extreme end of 

 this snout, and it is by means of these that the insects do their damage 

 to the corn. 



These insects vary in color from a light brown to a dark brown, 

 and the body is more or less covered with small narrow grooves arid dot- 

 like depressions. These insects pass the winter as hibernating adult 

 beetles, and are found under rubbish of all kinds in the grass field and 

 also in the swamp land that is grown up with the various large grasses, 

 reeds, rushes, etc. In the spring of the year, as soon as warm weather 

 appears, these insects come forth, and in May and June deposit their 

 eggs at the bases of these plants. The larvae feed upon the fibrous roots, 

 but more especially upon the bulbous roots of various grasses and sedges, 

 mining inside and hollowing them out, rarely eating up into the base of 

 the stem to any considerable extent. These 

 footless, grub-like larvae, one of which 

 is represented greatly enlarged in figure 

 47, may be found by pulling up the vari- 

 ous grasses and sedges and examining 

 the bulbous roots, inside of which they 

 may be found at any time during June, 

 July and August. The larvae form pupae 

 inside the hollowed out bulbous roots, and 

 transform to beetles late in the summer 

 or in the early fall; these beetles remain 

 in the field in which they hatch and hiber- 

 nate over winter there, not depositing 

 their eggs for another brood until the 

 following spring. 



When grass lands or swamp lands are 

 plowed in the spring of the year and 

 planted to corn, these various bill-bugs in 

 the adult condition attack the young corn 



plant near the base, and by eating holes Fig. 45.-The com Biii-Bug, sphen- 

 through the leaves and stem, enter intofijed"^ '''"''■^"''' ^^""^^ ^^^"^^' ^"' 

 and hollow out the inside, and thus feed upon the soft tissues, frequently 

 splitting the stalk and hollowing it out along the split portion. As the 

 plant grows and the leaves which are at first folded about the stem un- 

 fold and protrude, one notices series of parallel, circular or oblong holes 

 through the leaves. While there may be three or four such series parallel 

 to one another across the leaf, yet they were made by a single puncture 

 at the time the leaves were folded about the stem. The chances are that 



