16 THE CHINCH BUG. 
bug might have been, in early days in the Mississippi Valley, kept 
up to a high standard of development by the necessity of such an 
escape from prairie fires and not by the presence of Sporotrichum 
globuliferum, as suggested by Professor Saj6 in his paper, a trans- 
lation of which is included herein under the heading, “ Habits of 
the European species, Blissus doria Ferr.” 
As mentioned farther on, the advance of civilization having revo- 
lutionized the face of the country, there has come a corresponding 
change in the hibernating habits of the chinch bug. This insect 
must now seek shelter in the limited patches of timber that are left 
in the sections that were once entirely wooded and in the matted grass 
along fences and roadsides, but especially among the fallen leaves 
and rubbish that usually accumulate along Osage orange hedges. 
Brush piles, old haycocks, strawstacks, and, in Ohio, at any rate, 
shocks of corn fodder left standing in the fields through the winter, 
all harbor chinch bugs during the hibernating season. 
The fact that the insect hibernates in matted bluegrass along road- 
sides and fences has been called in question by Professor Forbes and 
by Mr. Marlatt, the former in his first report as State entomologist 
of Illinois (p. 37) and the latter in Insect Life (Vol. VII, p. 282), 
but notwithstanding this, in some parts of Ohio, in Indiana, and 
Uhnois they do hibernate in just such places and can be found there, 
especially during the winter and early spring following a season of 
abundance, but the investigator must know how to search for them. 
The writer has found them late in the fall collected under rails, half 
buried in soil and dead grass, and in northern Illinois, while search- 
ing for other insects in early spring, he was sure to find them in vary- 
ing numbers with small Carabide, Staphylinide, and other early 
appearing insects, on the under side of boards laid down in grassy 
places, though no amount of searching the grass itself would have 
revealed their presence. . 
In the timothy meadows of northeastern Ohio the percentage of 
long-winged individuals is always much greater in fall than in June, 
showing that some, at least, hibernate there and migrate to the cui- 
tivated fields in spring. In Maine, in the case of the maritime form, 
of 565 bugs collected in hibernation in October, 1902, only 60 had long 
wings.” 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 condi- 
tion until the following spring. This occurred so frequently that 
a@19th Rept. Maine Agric. Exp. Sta., 1903, p. 48. 
