GO REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 
Dr. Fitch also enumerates the following varieties of this insert: ; 
(a) immarginatus.—Basal of the thorax not edged with yellowish. Common. 
(b) dimidiatus.—Basa! half of the thorax deep velvety black, anterior half gray- — 
ish. Common. 
(c) fulvivenosus.—The stripes on the wing-covers tawny yellow instead of black. 
(d) albivenosus.—Wing-covers white, without any black marks except the mar- 
ginal spot. A male. 
(e) apterus (Plate I, fig. 7.—Wingless and the wing-covers much shorter than the 
abdomen. : 
(f) basalis.—Basal joint of the antennz dusky and darker than the second. 
(g) nigricornis.—Two first joints of the antennz blackish. 
(h) femoratus.—Legs pale livid yellow, the thighs tawny red. Common. 
(i) rufipedis.—Legs dark tawny red or redish brown. 
To these varieties, all @f which occur with us, I would add one which may be 
known as melanosus, in which the normal white of the wings is quite dusky, and 
contains additional black marks at base and toward tip, and in which all the mem- 
bers and the body except the rufous hind edge of thorax are jet black. 
In addition to these varieties mentioned by Dr. Riley, an interest- 
ing form has been collected by Mr. HE. A. Schwarz, at Lake Worth, 
Fla., and by Mr. O. Heidemann, at Fortress Monroe, Va. This va- 
riety is illustrated on Plate I at Fig. 8, and is at once distinguished 
_ from other short-winged varieties by its more slender and pointed wing- 
pads and by the color of the antenne, the first three jomts of which 
are honey-yellow, while the last joint or club is nearly black. It 
seems also to be more thickly clothed with silvery pile, but this is 
probably due to the fact that the specimens studied were mounted 
dry, while all others which I have seen have evidently been placed 
in alcohol. This variety, so far as we know, has been collected on 
the sea-shore only. 
NUMBER OF BROODS AND HIBERNATION. 
For many years there existed a misconception concerning the num- 
ber of broods of this insect in the West. It was always understood 
that there was more than one brood, and some newspaper writers in- 
sisted that- there were as many as five or six annual generations. 
Professor Riley, in the Practical Entomologist, Vol. I (March 26, 
1866), was the first to publish the definite statement that the Chinch 
Bug is two-brooded in northern Hlinois, and Dr. Shimer, the succeed- 
ing year, published the same statement from his own observations. 
This number of annual generations holds through the entire North- 
west and as far south certainly as the latitude of Saint Louis. 
Thomas states that there is some evidence of an occasional third 
brood in the extreme southern part of Illinois and in Kentucky, but 
that it is not sufficient to justify him in stating it as a fact, or 
to satisfy him of its correctness. In North Carolina there seems no 
question but that the second generation gave birth to still a third, 
which, as we are informed by Professor Atkinson, of Chapel Hull, 
was found in a half-grown condition on Crab Grass about the Ist of 
October. This third generation probably hibernates in the adult 
condition. 
The Chinch Bug passes the winter in the perfect state. As cold 
weather approaches most of the full-grown bugs leave the hardened 
corn-stalks or wild grasses upon which they have been attempting to 
feed and seek some convenient shelter in which to pass the winter. 
They collect in fence cracks, in sheds, hay-stacks, straw-stacks, corn- 
shucks, under leaves, mulching, and rubbish of all kinds upon the 
ground, under the loose bark of adjacent trees, in stumps and logs, 
under stones and clods of earth, in fact, in any situation which will 
§ “Ge 
‘ 2 1 
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