224 INSECTS AFFECTING WHEAT. 



parts of the plants. Many of those hibernating 

 around fields sown to wheat and barley make their 

 way in on foot, thus attacking the outer edges first ; 

 but others take wing and scatter freely wherever 

 .suitable food invites them. 



"By July most of the old bugs will be dead, and 

 the new brood will be nearly full-grown, — far enough 

 advanced by harvest to abandon the wheat fields for 

 the nearest available food — oats or corn, if these are 

 adjacent — otherwise and more rarely, grass. Making 

 their way in on foot, only the borders of these fields 

 will be at first attacked ; but later, by the 1st of Au- 

 gust at the farthest, the bugs not already located will 

 begin to fly, and so will become generally dissemi- 

 nated through fields of corn. Here the eggs are laid 

 behind sheaths of the lower leaves, and under the 

 protection of this retreat the young hatch and ma- 

 ture, only coming out upon the exposed surfaces of 

 the leaves when they become superabundant or when 

 they get their growth. The full-grown bugs fly 

 freely, singly but not in swarms, whenever their food 

 fails them where they are. Rarely we find in the 

 southern part of Illinois some trace of a third brood 

 in a season, the young of these appearing in Septem- 

 ber in the corn — but these are in too small numbers 

 to have any practical importance. The broods are 

 mainly two, one breeding chiefly in wheat, and the 

 other almost wholly in corn, the adults of the latter 

 brood passing the winter as above described. Each 

 female is believed to be capable of laying about five 

 hundred eggs. 



