The above characters, with the aid of the illustrations (fig. 1, ¢, d), 
serve to distinguish this corn root-worm from young wireworms! with 
which they are often associated in injury to corn and other cereals, 
grasses, and other plants. Before changing to pupa this root-worm 
attains a length of about half an inch. 
The pupa (fig. 1, f) presents no special features worthy of remark 
that are not shown in the accompanying illustration. It is white like 
the larva, and similar to that of the striped cucumber beetle. 
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, 
The twelve-spotted cucumber beetle occurs commonly throughout 
that portion of the United States lying between the Atlantic seacoast 
and the base of the Rocky Mountains, and from New England to Florida. 
It also inhabits Canada in the North and extends in a southwesterly 
direction through Texas into Mexico. Throughout practically all this 
region, which includes portions of twenty-nine States, it is really abun- 
dant, though not nearly so destructive in the northern as in the south- 
ern States, where year by year more or less injury is accomplished by 
the larvee or root-worms as far northward as Maryland, Virginia, and 
southern Ohio.” 
FOOD HABITS. 
The adult, as stated, is practically omnivorous. Its known food 
materials are legion and include, besides the blades, green ears, silk, 
and pollen of corn, the partly matured kernels of wheat, corn, and oats, 
the foliage of alfalfa, corn, clover, crimson clover, cotton, rye, tobacco, 
beets, cabbage, kale, cauliflower, turnip, mustard, cucumber, canta- 
loupe, watermelon, pumpkin, squash, okra, potato, tomato, rhubarb, 
and asparagus, the leaves and pods of beans, as also the buds, flowers, 
and sometimes the leaves of fruit trees, including apple, pear, quince, 
apricot, cherry, and peach, the buds and flowers of roses, dahlia, sun- 
flower, aster, canna, chrysanthemum, grapevine, sweet pea, cosmos, 
cultivated Bidens, and raspberry, the fruit of apple, melons and other 
curcurbits. To all of these more or less serious injury is inflicted. 
Among wild plants, or such as are of little practical utility, frequented 
by the beetles for food are golden-rod (Solidago), wild sunflower, New 
Jersey tea (Ceanothus), pokeweed (Phytolacca), milkweed (Asclepias), 
groundsel (Senecio), horse nettle, Nelumbo, Impatiens, and Amorpha.’ 
' The latter, it should be stated, are usually more or less flattened, especially 
at the head, while the posterior extremity is usually toothed, notched, or pointed. 
They also serve to separate this root-worm from maggots of several small flies, 
such as the seed-corn maggots, which also infest corn roots. The root-feeding 
maggots, however, are footless, while the root-worms have six legs placed near 
the head. 
2In the Pacific States it is replaced by a similar very closely related species, 
Diabrotica soror Lec., which is sometimes quite injurious. 
3Some of the food plants above enumerated have not hitherto been recorded, 
