DEVELOPMENT AND HABITS OF THE YOUNG. DS 
patches, as seen in figure 5, where they are shown on a stalk of young 
corn. Mr. E. A. Schwarz relates a curious exception to this habit in 
Florida upon sand oats, /niola paniculata, where the entire develop- 
ment of the insect is undergone upon the highest part of this tall 
plant and not close to the bottom. Mr. Schwarz has given as a proba- 
ble reason for this the fact that strong winds are continually blowing 
the fine, sharp sand through among the lower parts of the plants, 
rendering it nearly or quite impossible for the bugs to remain in that 
situation, thus forcing them to seek their sustenance farther up the 
plants. While figure 5 gives a good representation of the appearance 
of a corn plant when the chinch bugs are present in excessive numbers. 
yet the writer has invariably found that these bugs much prefer a 
stallx that has been blown down by the wind or partly broken off by 
the plow and left lying nearly flat upon the ground. 
In timothy meadows the very young are to be found only by pull- 
ing away the soil from about the bulbous roots and drawing down 
Fic. 4.—Blissus leucopterus: adults of short-winged form. Much enlarged (original). 
the dead sheaths that usually envelop them. An observer may even 
pull up a tuft of grass entire, and yet, unless he examines in this way 
closely, may overlook them, so snugly are they thus ensconced among 
the roots. If driven to forsake a tuft of grass the young bugs move to 
another and crawl downward, and are soon to be found as snugly 
settled as before. It is only when they are older and well advanced 
toward maturity that they work to any extent above ground, and 
even then only in cases where they are present in great numbers. 
Singularly enough, where infested meadows are plowed up and 
planted with corn the females seem to ignore the young corn plants 
and select the occasional stray clumps of timothy that cultivation has 
failed to destroy and deposit their eggs about these, so that later the 
young may be swarming about these last, while hardly one is to be 
found about the young corn. This is precisely the opposite of what 
is observed farther west. 
