34 PAPERS ON CEREAL AND FORAGE INSECTS. 
stalks, under the weeds in the field, and beneath the rubbish collected about the 
hedgerows. Not a single specimen was found in these situations, although every 
temptation was afforded to hibernating insects, and many other species occurred 
abundantly. To what resorts the swarms which had developed in these situations 
had betaken themselves to pass the winter, I am not able to say. 
Prof. Herbert Osborn,? in giving a summary of his observations 
on the chinch bug in Jowa in 1894, states: 
In a great majority of cases, 90 per cent or more, the infested fields were directly | 
adjacent to hedges or thickets or belts of timber, and in 75 per cent osage-orange hedges 
were the most available shelter. In about 13 per cent of cases the evidence showed 
hibernation in grass and weeds and in some of these cases there could scarcely be a 
doubt that the hibernating bugs were protected by a heavy growth of grass or weeds 
and that they moved from these directly into adjacent fields. 
Prof. F. M. Webster, of this bureau, has probably given the chinch 
bug more attention than any other entomologist and has contributed 
more to our knowledge of the pest. His observations in Ohio and 
those made by Prof. Herbert Osborn in Iowa are at variance with 
those made in Kansas by Mr. Marlatt and by the writers. Prof. 
Webster offers the following explanation ¢ of their hibernating habits 
in different localities: 
In Kansas, where Mr. Marlatt made his observations, there was still too much 
prairie, and the species was doubtless still adhering to its ancient habits of hibernation. 
In southern Ohio the author has found it attacking the wheat in May, in small isolated 
spots over the fields, while there was nothing in the least to imply an invasion from 
outside, but the wheat had been sown in the fall among corn, and later the cornstalks 
cut off and shocked, remaining in this condition until the following spring. This 
occurred so frequently that there seemed no room to doubt that the attacks had been 
caused by adults wintering over in the corn fodder and that these left their winter 
quarters in spring to feed and breed on the grain growing nearest at hand. 
The hibernating habits of the chinch bugs have been closely 
observed during two seasons in Kansas and Oklahoma, and the obser- 
vations made indicate that the bugs hibernate there chiefly in dense 
clumps of sedge grass, principally those of different species of Andro- 
pogon. 
The following data with reference to the hibernating habits of the 
chinch bugs were made by the writers in southern Kansas, and are 
given here to substantiate the above statement: 
From Mr. Hayhurst’s notes made in the fall of 1907: On October 
26, at Winfield, Kans., he found active adult chinch bugs in stools of 
broom beard grass (Andropogon scoparius) in great numbers, always 
close to the ground. On November 1, 1907, at Newkirk, Okla., he 
again found many active bugs in the stools of forked beard grass 
(Andropogon furcatus) close to the ground. They were present in 
nearly every stool of this grass examined along roadsides and also on 
the open prairie where the grass had been cut. 

a Bul. 69, Bur. Ent., U. S. Dept. Agr., pp. 16-17, 1907. 
