October, "09] JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 333 



drill rows, had been badly gnawed so that they could never germinate. 

 Many kernels were almost entirely eaten up, as the accompanying 

 illustration shows. As our correspondent had written, four or five 

 of these larv^ were to be found in every foot of the drill row, and 

 in a half hour over forty of them were picked up. Another field 

 planted in ground just broken from sod was almost as severely 

 infested. In still another field growing up to volunteer wheat the 

 larvt'e were present abundantly. In fact this condition seemed to be 

 general in all the fields over the whole region, extending at least over 

 the southern half of Furnas County, as over a dozen farmers of the 

 vicinity with whom the waiter spoke testified that their fields were in- 

 fested similarly to those examined. It was necessary with one field 

 of ninety acres in winter wheat to completely resow forty acres. At 

 the prevailing price of wheat this was so serious an item that some 

 of the oldest wheat growers would not replant, but decided to allow 

 the ground to lay over until they could plant corn in the spring. 



"While searching for larva in the drill rows a solitary specimen of 

 Eleodes opaca Say was caught as it crawled sluggishly over the ground. 

 The owner of the field immediatel}' identified this beetle as the same 

 as certain "black bugs" concerning which he had just been inquir- 

 ing, great numbers of which had swarmed in the fields just after har- 

 vest (late July), and other farmers corroborated this testimony from 

 experience in their own fields. In fact we had received reports of 

 this occurrence, accompanied by specimens from McCook, in the same 

 general region, at the time. So abundant were the beetles on this farm 

 that the owner became alarmed and tried poisoning them, but with 

 what success he did not fully ascertain. On hot days up to the latter 

 part of October the beetles were still in evidence. 



After a careful examination the larvae were identified as apparently 

 belonging to one of our tenebrionid beetles, probably an Eleodes, and 

 specimens were sent to Prof. F. M. Webster, who corroborated this 

 determination. The abundance of the beetles of Eleodes opaca in the 

 fields during the summer and the great abundance of these certainly 

 allied larva3 in the same fields later in the year justified our tentative 

 reference of the new pest to that species, which identification has been 

 amply verified by subsequent rearings of the larva. 



Following my visit to Beaver City there was a heavy rain in the 

 vicinity, and immediately after this rain the larva were found ' ' crawl- 

 ing all over the top of the ground by the thousand." according to 

 our correspondent, who had agreed to keep the larva under observa- 

 tion for us, but they returned to a slight depth after the ground had 

 dried out somewhat. Following this rain the injuries distinctly 



