218 



BILL-BUGS; GR A L\- WEEVILS. 



Prof. Smith writes as follows about such beetles : "In many 

 localities corn is attacked soon after it shows above ground by in- 

 sects known as 'Corn Bill-bug's.' ( In eastern Maryland and Vir- 

 ginia they call corn injured by such beetles 'Frenchy,' in the 

 same way in which they call the I'hrasher, a singing bird inferior 

 in song to the Mocking-bird, the 'French Mocking-bird'), 

 'ihese belong to the genus Sphenophonis, and are blackish or 

 }.>rown, rarely gray in color, varying from one-fourth to one-half 

 an inch in length, with very thick and hard wing-covers, which 



Fig. 233. — Spheaophorus ochreus, Lee; larva and adult. After Division of Ento- 

 mology, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



are ridged and punctured, as is also the thorax. They hide in 

 the soil at the base of the corn-plants during the day, and kill them 

 by boring little round holes in the stem. They are most frequent- 

 ly after timothy, especially on old sod ; or when corn follows 

 sedges or bulb-rooted grasses. It is in such places that the larva? 

 live naturally, pupating in fall or early spring, and the beetles, 

 finding that their natural food is gone on spring plowed land, 

 attack the corn, which replaces it, and is nearly enough like it to 

 be to their taste. The period of injury is usually short, and if 

 replanting is delayed a little, the new shoots escape attack. Fall- 

 plowing old timothy-sod or sedge-land is always indicated, and 



