18 THE CHINCH BUG. 
shock by heavy rains became covered with water that stood over 
it long enough for a sheet of ice to form. When the water had sub- 
sided the corn was husked and a number of chinch bugs were found 
among the ears, where they had been immersed for a week or more; 
yet on being exposed to the warm sun they began to crawl about in 
a lively manner. 
The Maine Agricultural Experiment Station some years ago @ car- 
ried out a series of experiments with the maritime form to determine 
the effect- of freezing. Ten long-winged and 6 short-winged bugs 
were frozen in an open box for fifteen hours. Upon thawing out 2 
gave no signs of life. After being kept for nine hours at a tempera- 
ture of 65° the 14 surviving bugs were refrozen for fifteen hours and 
then thawed out, when 5 long-winged and 3 short-winged revived. . 
After nine hours at a temperature of 65° they were frozen a third 
time for fifteen hours, during which time the minimum temperature 
sank to 16° below zero. When thawed out all revived, but during 
the following nine hours at 65° temperature the 3 short-winged bugs 
and 2 of the long-winged ones died. The remaining 3 long-winged 
were then frozen a fourth time for fifteen hours, after which none 
revived. 
In summarizing the results of these experiments, 25 in number, 
it was found that complete submersion in water, even for a considera- 
ble period, is not necessarily fatal. Freezing during submersion in 
water is almost surely fatal. Freezing while exposed to dry atmos- 
phere is generally fatal. Freezing in a moisture-laden atmosphere 
is only occasionally fatal. It will be observed, however, that not all 
of these results would necessarily follow corresponding experiments 
with the inland long-winged form. : 
SPRING, SUMMER, AND AUTUMN MIGRATIONS. 
If there is an ample supply of proper food close at hand the chinch 
bug simply crawls from its hibernating place, but if it is in the timo- 
thy meadows of northeastern Ohio it does nothing but continue its 
ravages where it left off the autumn before, except some of the 
long-winged form, which very evidently fly to the wheat and corn 
fields. In wheat fields—unless the migration has been from an ad- 
joining field, in which case the attack is made along the edge nearest 
thereto—the females do not seem to forsake their gregarious habits 
entirely, as they do not scatter out evenly over the entire field, but ap- 
pear to locate in colonies, and when the young hatch and begin to attack 
the growing grain their presence is first disclosed by small whitening 
patches, which increase in dimensions as the young become older and 
more numerous. In low-lying fields these whitening patches more 
ne 
¢ Nineteenth Rept. Maine Agric. Exp. Sta., 1903, p. 48, 
