16 THE CHINCH BUG. 
ment from his own observations. This number of annual generations 
holds through the entire northwest and as far south, certainly, as the 
latitude of Saint Louis. Thomas states that there is some evidence of an 
occasional third brood in the extreme southern part of Illinois and in 
Kentucky, but that itis not sufficient to justify him in stating it as a 
fact, or to satisfy him of its correctness. In North Carolina there seems 
no question but that the second generation gave birth to still a third, 
which, as we are informed by Professor Atkinson of Chapel Hill, was 
found in a half-grown condition on Crab-grass about the 1st of Octo- 
ber. November 17 most of the specimens found in the same locations 
were full-grown. This third generation probably hibernates in the adult 
condition. ; 
The Chinch Bug passes the winter in the perfect state. As cold 
weather approaches, most of the full-grown bugs leave the hardened 
corn-stalks or wild grasses upon which they have been attempting to 
feed, and seek some convenient shelter in which to pass the winter. They 
collect in fence cracks, in sheds, hay stacks, straw stacks, corn-shucks, 
under leaves, mulching, and rubbish of all kinds upon the ground, under 
the loose bark of adjacent trees, in stumps and logs, under stones and 
clods of earth, in fact in any situation which will offer shelter. They 
seem to prefer dry situations. Bunches of old dead grass and weeds offer 
them a particularly attractive place for hibernation. Professor Atkin- 
son writes us that the Crab-grass in North Carolina not only affords the 
bugs sustenance after the corn-stalks harden, but also gives them shel- 
ter for the winter, as they work their way down between the leaf-sheath 
and the stalk. Mr. J.O. Alwood writes us from Columbus, Ohio, that, 
October 26, 1887, he observed them lying torpid within the leaf-sheaths 
of an uncut field of Pearl Millet. During cold weather they remain tor- 
pid. On a warm, sunshiny day they will stretch their legs and begin 
to move about to a slight extent; but as the cold becomes severe they 
press back deeper into their hiding places. They can withstand the 
severest cold, and in fact, as with so many other hibernating insects, 
the more sustained the cold weather the more the insects winter 
successfully. An instance is related by a reliable correspondent of 
Dr. Thomas’ in which the bugs frozen into ice were thawed and 
when warm manifested signs of life, crawling about as in the spring. 
Dr. Shimer’s observations upon this point are sufficiently interesting to 
quote: 
After the early autumn frosts they left their feeding-grounds on foot in search of 
winter quarters ; none could be seen on the wing as at harvest time. For a winter 
retreat they resorted to any convenient shelter they might chance to find, as long 
grass, weeds, boards, pieces of wood, rails, fallen-tree leaves, ete. 
In January, 1865, I next examined their condition. Those that I found in the 
sheaths of the corn-leaves above the snow, and had been thus exposed during the pre- 
vious severe weather—when for several days the thermometer was 15° to 20° below 
zero—were invariably found dead without exception, and those beneath the snow 
