21 



Champaign. In Union county, also, most careful search in corn- 

 fields and in other' proper situations, has failed to give us the 

 slightest evidence of the presence of this species. I think it scarcely 

 likely that this immunity of our southern corn fields is due to any 

 geographical limitation upon the spread of the species, since it was 

 first described from Arkansas, was first reported as a corn insect 

 from St. Louis county, Missouri, and has been frequently mentioned 

 as very abundant in central Kansas. In a note of twenty years 

 ago to Mr. Walsh, Prof. W. S. Eobertson, of Kansas, reported 

 the occurrence of this insect in very large numbers upon sorghum, 

 its usual home being a large thistle. In his comments upon this 

 information, printed in the "Practical Entomologist" for October, 

 1866, Mr. Walsh remarks that he took three specimens of this 

 species many years ago, on flowers in central Illinois. Its rarity at 

 that time, in the experience of so active a collector as Mr. Walsh, 

 is evidence that this species is a somewhat recent enemy 

 of corn in Illinois. It probably invaded the State from the west- 

 ward, having its original home on the great plains, whence we 

 received also its more notorious ally, the Colorado potato beetle. 



From an observation first reported to me by a correspondent of 

 the office, Mr. Benjamin Buckman, of Farmingdale, 111., we derived 

 an interesting item relating to the life history and habits of Epicce- 

 rus imbricatus, — a snout beetle occurring very commonly in mis- 

 cellaneous collections and also often encountered in my studies 

 of the food of birds. These specimens, taken May 29, were charged 

 by Mr. Buckman with eating the leaves of young pear trees. "They 

 come up out of the ground," he says, "and may be seen with their 

 heads just sticking out as if the earth had not been broken above 

 them, while others have holes to which they seem to retreat, like a 

 spider." The beetles were sent me in a box wdth a twig of pear, 

 and when received several of the leaves were found stuck together 

 by their opposed surfaces, with a closely packed layer of slender 

 white eggs between them. To make sure that these were the eggs 

 of the Epicaerus, the beetles were removed to another box Jane 1, 

 and confined with a fresh twig of pear. They were found two or 

 three days afterwards, to have laid eggs upon the leaves and then 

 to have gummed the latter together as above described. The edges 

 of many of the leaves were also eaten. In an attempt to secure 

 the hatching of the eggs, these were unfortunately left until they 

 spoiled. 



On page 18B of Mr. Saunders' valuable work on "Insects Inju- 

 rious to Fruits," occurs one of the very few inaccurate statements 

 which I have noticed in this book. Speaking of the plum curoulio 

 (ConotracJielvs nentqiliar) he says that it occasionally deposits its 

 eggs in the pear and apple, but that in these fruits it seldom 

 matures. Finding, in 1881, that a large orchard of the present Sec- 

 retary of the State Horticultural Society of Illinois, A. C. Hammond, 

 Esq., at Warsaw, was badly infested by curculios, I collected about half 

 a bushel of apples from which the imagos had not as yet emerged, 

 and, placing them in breeding cages at Normal, I finally obtained 

 a considerable number of adults of the plum curculio, — how many, 

 I find our notes do not clearly state. During experiments made in 



