Report of the State Entomologist. 81 



logues — formerly Hippodamia maculata. Its detection on corn, as 

 above, is of special interest, as it is the third time that testimony has 

 been borne to the effect that the above species, for a long time 

 thought to be entirely hai-mless, may, under certain circumstances, 

 become decidedly injurious. 



Not all of the Lady-bugs are Carnivorous. 



The family of Coccinellidce, comprising the lady-bugs, has been 

 regarded as entirely carnivorous, and as the food of very many of the 

 species consists largely of plant-lice, they have been taken under the 

 protection of entomologists and of all others who knew of the great 

 service that they render in checking the prodigious multiplication of the 

 destructive aphides. Within a few years past it has come to light 

 that the members of the family' are by uo means exclusively confined 

 to an animal diet, but that a number of them subsist, in part, upon 

 vegetable food. In several of the species it constitute the larger pro- 

 portion of their diet. This has been brought out by the pains-taking 

 studies made by Professor Forbes, State Entomologist of Illinois. In 

 a valuable paper published b}' him, in Bulletin No. 6, of the Illinois 

 State Laboratory of Natural Eidory, January, 1883, entitled "The Food 

 Relations of the Carabidse and Coccinellidse," 31 pages, the results are 

 given of the examination of the contents of the alimentary canal of 

 twenty-one specimens of lady-bugs {Coccinellidce), collected at differ- 

 ent times throughout the year, and in various localities, mounted on 

 glass slides, and examined under high magnifjdng powers. It was 

 ascertained that more than one-half of their food (fifty-three per 

 cent.) had consisted of vegetable matter — mainly the spores of 

 fungi. Of the animal food, above one-third (thirty-six per cent.) was 

 of plant-lice. 



We would be very glad if the above investigations, while they have 

 served to greatly extend the known range of food of our j)retty 

 friends — the lady-birds — and by their consumption of the sj)ores of 

 useless lichens and noxious fungi, to place us under additional obli- 

 gations to them, could also have shown us that their mouth-parts were 

 of such a structure as to limit their diet to insect pests and worthless 

 vegetation. But other observations have told us a different story. 



The Leaves of Corn Eaten by the Beetle. 

 In the summer of 1874, an insect, which proved to be Megilla 

 maculata — the same as the species above mentioned — was sent 

 from St. Inigoes, Md., with the statement that it had done con- 

 siderable injury to corn by eating holes in the blades {American 

 Naturalist, for April, 1881,_xv. p. 326). Upon the attempt being made 

 26 ' 



