93 
On the hill back of Richmond village, on Staten Island, I have seen them 
varrying heavy harvest flies to these burrows, several of which are dug there 
nearly every summer. The task of carrying so great a burden as a Cicada is a 
particularly laborious one, and they do not fly very fast when thus heavily laden, 
Sometimes they drag the harvest-flies a distance along the ground, and sometimes 
they resort to an ingenious method to finally get them to their burrows. 
In August, 1889, I observed a Stizus carrying a Cicada and ftying slowly up 
a hill side. It lit at the base of a black birch on the hill top, and dragged the 
harvest-fly, holding the smooth dorsal surface to the bark, to the topmost branches 
finally disappearing among the leaves. I did not see it leave the tree, for I was 
unable to command a view on all sides at the same time, and then there was a 
neighboring birch whose branches interlocked with the one where the hornet was. 
I satisfied myself that it did leave, by climbing up and violently shaking the 
branches and tree top, Stizus employs this method of transporting the heavy 
Cicada ; it climbs the tree with the insect, and then fties from the branches, the 
excessive weight gradually bringing it to the ground again but nearer to its 
burrow. 
Professor Morse, in his annual address before the American Association in 
1887, notices the following:—Dr. Thomas Meehan describes a hornet that was 
gifted with great intelligence. He saw this insect struggling with a large locust 
in unsuccessful attempts to fly away with it. After several fruitless efforts to 
fly up from the ground with his victim, he finally dragged it fully thirty feet to 
a tree, to the top of which he laboriously ascended, still clinging to his burden, 
and having attained this elevated position he flew off in a horizontal direction 
with the locust.” 
Commenting upon this, Mr. C. G. Rockwood, jr.,in Science for August 19th, 
1887, gives an account of a large insect evidently of the wasp family, that carried 
a Cicada for a distance of twenty feet up a maple tree and then flew away with 
it as described above. 
Wishing to ascertain the relative weights of these insects, I had dried speci- 
mens, including pins, weighed in a druggist’s scales. Cicada tibicen weighed 
thirteen grains and Stizus speciosus seven and one half—W. T. Davis, Tompkins- 
ville, Staten Island, N. Y. ; 
EXPERIMENTS FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF CHINCH BUGS. 
BY PROF, F. H. SNOW, UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, LAWRENCE. 
These experiments have been continued through the two seasons of 1889 
and 1890 and have been remarkably successful. As entomologist to the Kansas 
State Board of Agriculture I had prepared an article for the annual meeting of 
that Board in January, 1889, stating what was known at that time upon the 
subject, and calling attention to the investigations of Professors Forbes, Burrill 
and Lugger. In June, 1889, a letter was received from Dr. J. T Curtiss, of 
Dwight, Morris County, Kansas, announcing that one of the diseases mentioned 
in the article (Entomophthora) was raging in various fields in that region, and 
stating that in many places in fields of oats and wheat the ground was fairly 
white with the dead bugs. Some of these dead bugs were at once obtained and 
experiments were begun in the entomological laboratory of the University. It 
was found that living healthy bugs, when placed in the same jar with the dead 
