334 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 2 



iil)ated, the larv« seemingly not injuring the germinated wheat or 

 sprouts. Though no corn fields were examined by the writen while at 

 Beaver City, farmers stated that some of these larvae were present 

 there also, even in one field which had not been cropped in wheat for 

 five years. Furthermore, in our breeding cages the larvae ate com 

 kernels greedily, while two of them were taken from a box containing 

 several ears of corn shipped in from Gothenburg, Nebraska, as sam- 

 ples of corn-ear worm injury. Presumably they had located them- 

 selves in the tips of the fallen ears and in transit had made their way 

 out again. Accordingly it will not be surprising if this insect is 

 found to be at times of serious injury to planted corn also. 



On April 14, 1909, Mr. C. H. Gable of this office visited the same 

 locality and found that the stand was so thin that most of the fields 

 were being disked preparatory to planting a new crop. The larv^ 

 were not in the drill rows, as a most careful examination disclosed, but 

 were abundant just underneath the surface in the little piles of loose, 

 dry drifted soil, in old corn fields about the half rotted stubs, some- 

 times as many as thirty about a single stub. They were also feed- 

 ing upon the crowns of the wheat plants to a small extent, especially 

 where these were adjacent to the drifts wherein the larvae were con- 

 gregated. Mr. Gable found larvae actually engaged in this injury, 

 the exact character and extent of which is shown in the accompanying 

 illustration. It is possible that these larvee do not descend to a great 

 depth in the winter and that they have considerable resistance to 

 cold is shown by an accident which befell one of our breeding cages. 

 On the night of January 28 a storm blew in one of the windows and 

 dashed the cage to the floor, spilling the contents. This happened 

 at about 10 p. m. and for twelve hours they were exposed to a sweep- 

 ing wind of from fifty-nine to seventy-two miles an hour at a temper- 

 ature hovering about zero. The next morning they were gathered up 

 and placed in a warm room and out of eleven thus gathered eight 

 recovered activity and burrowed under the ground again. 



In our breeding cages the first pupa was found on the morning of 

 May 28, when a larva which had come to the surface and lay there 

 quietly for three days pupated over night. Twelve days later, June 

 8, this pupa had developed into a beetle. Another larva, which came 

 to the surface of the ground May 28, had pupated May 31 and trans- 

 formed to the imago June 10. Other larvfe pupated down to several 

 inches in the earth, the last pupa being secured July 19. Almost 

 simultaneously with the emergence of the beetles in the breeding cages 

 they began appearing in numbers in the fields, and under date of June 

 17 our correspondent at Beaver City reported large numbers of them 



