Its earlier stages arc as yet unknown, altho the larvae must certainly 

 be very abundant somewhere. We know nothing of its breeding 

 habits, as it is the fully developed insect that does the injury. 



INFESTS LOW-LYING, FLAT LANDS. 



This beetle appears to depredate only in the lower, flatter lands, 

 and the writer has in past years many times observed it in great num- 

 bers floating about on the surface of the water, in cornfields, on the 

 level prairie country of Illinois, immediately after a severe rain storm 

 in spring. It is in such localities that wireworms are most injurious, 

 and it seems quite probable that a considerable part of the damage 

 placed to the credit of the latter may be really due to this pest. 

 Farmers are very often unable to account for their failure to get the 

 seed corn to germinate, and not discovering the cause, they charge it up 

 to wireworms. The writer knows no reason for the beetle's apparent 

 partiality for the lower and usually darker lands, and can only sur- 

 mise that it must find a greater or more easily accessible food supply 

 in such localities, altho probably it is very often carried there in great 

 numbers by the water. The same characteristic is to be observed in 

 many other insects to which this drift theory will hardly apply, hence 

 the reason for this preference must for the present remain obscure. 

 Despite abundance, its depredations do not seem to come to common 

 notice except at long intervals and in widely separated localities, but 

 this again may be due to the fact that the farmer attributes the in- 

 juries to other causes, and the entomologist is misled on account of its 

 supposedly carnivorous and predaceous habits, which would place it 

 among beneficial instead of injurious insects. 



HISTORY OF ITS DEPREDATIONS. 



The first record of its seed-corn-destroying habit was published by 

 the writer in November, 1890," the beetles having been received under 

 date of June 11, previous, from "Whitley County, Ind., where they 

 were reported as attacking the seed kernels in the vicinity of the 

 germ as soon as these kernels had become softened by the action of 

 the moisture in the soil. When this material was received one of the 

 beetles was engaged in burrowing into a kernel after this manner. 

 This instance for fifteen years remained the sole proof of the destruc- 

 tive habits of this insect in the cornfields or elsewhere. 



In 1905 Prof. R. II. Pettit, of the Michigan Agricultural College, 

 reported it as having been received about June 5 of that year, with 



a Insect Life Vol. III. p. L59. 

 [Circ 78] 



