HIBERNATION. . We 
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. 
Prof. Herbert Osborn,* in giving a summary of his observations 
on the chinch bug in Iowa in 1894, states that “ In a great majority 
of cases, 90 per cent or more, the infested fields were directly adja- 
cent 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 the cases the evidence showed hibernation in grass and weeds, and 
in some of these cases there could scarcely be a doubt that the hiber- 
nating bugs were protected by a heavy growth of grass or weeds and 
that they moved from these directly into the adjacent grain fields.” 
Prof. Lawrence Bruner had previously called attention to the fact 
that the chinch bug hibernated in great numbers about Osage orange 
hedges in Nebraska. Doctor Lugger, in Minnescta, gives the follow- 
ing as offering shelter to the bugs during winter: “ Rubbish of all 
kinds, but chiefly that of hedges, wind-breaks, and along the edges 
of woods, as well as corn fodder, logs, and even loose bark and 
stones.” 
While drenching rains are beyond all possible doubt fatal to the 
newly hatched young, the adult bugs seem to be almost proof against 
either wet or cold weather. It is doubtless true that very many 
individuals die in their winter quarters, and in fact the writer has 
found these dead in considerable numbers in some instances during 
early spring, but it seems at least doubtful if either cold or wet would 
entirely account for this fatality. It would seem that somewhere 
and at some period in the past this hibernation has been more for 
protection from natural enemies than against the elements, though 
of course there might have been other reasons not discernible under 
a changed environment. The pupa hides away to molt, though it 
does not appear that this course is followed in the earlier stages, and 
the reasons for this are not at all clear. That the adult is able to 
withstand combined cold and wet weather is amply proved by the 
observations of several people. Dr. Hy. Shimer, in Illinois, found 
that those which were in corn husks filled with ice, even the chinch 
bugs themselves being inclosed in the crystallized element, were able 
to run about when they were thawed out, apparently unaffected by a 
temperature that had varied from 15° to 20° below zero Fahr. It 
seemed that when exposed to the sweeping prairie winds at that 
temperature, with no protecting cover, they perished. Mr. G. A. 
Waters, in the Farmers’ Review for October 19, 1887, relates that a 
bunch of fodder that had fallen into a ditch washed out near a corn 
4Chinch Bug Observations in Iowa in 1894, Insect Life, Vol. VII, pp. 280-232. 
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