290 Kansas Academy of Science. 



that the pest had died out entirely. While this event might be 

 possible in local instances, yet, in face of a logical considera- 

 tion, the belief that extermination had become general was 

 promptly discredited as being unreasonable as well as mislead- 

 ing. In the first place, if green bugs or any other kind of in- 

 sect should wholly perish on account of one or more adverse 

 seasonal conditions without having deposited eggs for rees- 

 tablishing its kind after the critical period had passed, such 

 species would become extinct. 



At harvest time, when the grain plants ceased to furnish 

 nutriment for sustaining the pest, all the bugs apparently 

 disappeared. But this incident did not make certain the pre- 

 vailing notion that all had died. That the pest still existed 

 in the country was evidenced by later developments, although 

 these were not determined until the second season following. 

 The species must therefore have survived the summer in some 

 obscure manner and in such scarcity as to have escaped obser- 

 vation. 



Even before the grain plants matured, the pest became 

 scarce owing to the activity of its enemies instead of the effects 

 of warmer weather, further than that the latter condition 

 favored the enemies. Wingless forms seemed to perish out- 

 right with the drying of the plants, but the winged forms, 

 being amply fitted for migration, doubtlessly flew away in 

 search of some succulent plant on which they and their prog- 

 eny could subsist. Just what shift these bugs m.ake, lasting 

 from harvest time until the fall planting of small grain has 

 sprouted, could not be determined, as has been explained. 

 Several kinds of grasses, however, are known to serve as 

 alternative or possible summer food plants. The bugs evi- 

 dently exist in some way, since they reappear in the fall or in 

 successive seasons on the young grain plants in the fields. 



On the whole, the experimental breeding of green bugs 

 proved fairly successful throughout the hot and dry weather 

 of July and August. The unfortunate part of my work at the 

 end was occasioned by the abrupt termination of operations at 

 the time when development of true sexual forms had barely 

 become effective. Hence, this discontinuance resulted in the 

 incompleteness of observations concerning oviparous females. 



