October, '09] JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 335 



crawling about over the ground. During the present summer (1909) 

 they have been as abundant as last year, and under date of July 

 31 our correspondent reports them in undiminshed numbers but tend- 

 ing to burrow out of sight in the ground, probably for purposes of 

 oviposition. A female was dissected on August 10, the ovaries of 

 which contained seven eggs. These eggs were oval, the chorion pure 

 creamy white and without sculpture and measured 1.5-1.7 mm. x .8 to 

 .85 mm. Other gravid females placed in a breeding cage with the 

 bottom shallowly covered with earth on August 9 soon deposited eggs 

 in the soil and when this soil was re-examined August 30 newly 

 hatched living larvte as well as larger dead and dried larvge, evidently 

 hatched several days previously, were found, apparently fixing the 

 hatching period at something less than three weeks. The newly 

 hatched larva is soft, pure white in color and about 2.5 mm. long, but 

 soon darkens and assumes its corneous integument. 



The fully grown larvae of Eleodes opaca average about 16 mm. long, 

 are yellowish in color and have a very striking general resemblance to 

 wireworms because of their heavily cliitinized elongate, cylindrical 

 and ventrally flattened bodies. The body surface is glabrous, except 

 on the ventral surface of the head and thorax, on the legs and on the 

 pygidium. The larva agrees very closely with Blaisdell's figures and 

 description of the larva of Eleodes dentipes'^ but has several minor 

 points of distinction, e. g., the anterior legs are quite spineless, but 

 the intermediate and posterior legs are abundantly spinose, the pyg- 

 idium is subtriangular, with apex broadly rounded and bearing two 

 small spines, while on each lateral margin may be found six or seven 

 minute blunt tubercles, the whole of the segment bearing scattered 

 long bristles. The pupa is 16 mm. long x 3.5 mm. wide, creamy white, 

 darker on the head and legs, with the antennae blackish, and in general 

 structure agrees quite well with Blaisdell's figures and description of 

 the pupa of Eleodes clavicornis, but the third and fourth ventral seg- 

 ments are transverse apically like the others, the small segment at base 

 of terminal cerci is but feebly emarginate, the emargination of the 

 lateral processes of segments 2-6 are of a radically different and more 

 complex pattern, while the pronotum has but a single row of closely 

 set lateral setee, the post-apical and antebasal being very feeble or 

 lacking, etc. The image is well known and has been quite adequately 

 described elsewhere. 



The success of our breeding experiments was greatly detracted by 

 the presence among the larvffi of what was apparently a bacterial 

 disease. A small dark red spot would appear somewhere upon the 



^Blaisdell, Revision of the Eleodiini of the United States, p. 497-499 (1909), 



