421 



Centrali-Ainericana, those I am able to tiiid on the map are all on the 

 coast. Extended cultivation of grain in Central America is of ancient 

 date, and we should expect to find the chinch bug widely distributed 

 there inland, but for the present the Volcano di Chiriqui, in Panama, is 

 the only inland locality on record. The locality Tamaulipas, Mexico, is 

 too indefinite to tell whether or not the specimens collected there came 

 from the seashore, and the same holds true of the locality Cuba. 



Various North American maritime plants and insects occur also on 

 the sandy beaches of the Great Lakes or still inhabit the ancient shore 

 line of the Cretaceous ocean west of the Mississippi Valley (see Dr. 

 J. L. Le Conte's address in Proc. A. A. A. S., 1875, pp. 4, o),but whether 

 or not the chinch bug has been among them can not longer be ascer- 

 tained in the absence of early records, although I believe that the 

 assumption of its occurrence on the shores of Lake Erie previous to the 

 time when it was generally distributed inland explains the doubtful 

 l)oiuts in Mr. Van Duzee's article on the occurrence of the chinch bug 

 at Bufialo, N. Y. (Can. Ent., vol. xvm, 1886, p. 219). 



Furthermore, there are some other points which deserve to be men- 

 tioned in this connection : The appearance of the chinch bug in such 

 prodigious numbers; its extreme power of destruction in the Western 

 States, and its marked susceptibility to the influence of moist weather 

 are in striking contrast with the behavior of all other insects which are 

 truly native of these States ; the apj)arently complete absence of par- 

 asitic insect enemies also strongly jjoiuts to the fact that it is an intro- 

 duced species, in this instance not from foreign countries but from our 

 coast regions. 



The actual proof that the chinch bug did not occur in former years 

 in the Western States can not longer be given. From Professor Forbes's 

 remarks (Insect Life, vol. i, p. 249) it would appear that the insect 

 was in the Mississippi Valley as early as 1823. Still the fact that Say, 

 when in 1831 he described Lygceus leucopterus from a single specimen 

 taken on the coast of Virginia, had never found the chinch bug in the 

 West, although he had been a resident of southern Indiana for six years 

 and had previously traveled extensively in what was then called Mis- 

 souri Territory, shows at least that it was not generally distributed 

 over the Western States. As far as the Eastern States are concerned, 

 the early records,* fragmentary as they are, show that the chinch bug 

 gradually spread inland from the coast regions of the Carolinas. 



The hibernation of the chinch bug in its maritime home has been 

 observed by me only at a single place, but the characteristic features 

 of the sand dunes are so uniform all along our coast that the experi- 

 ence in one locality undoubtedly holds trne for all. This particular 

 locality is in the immediate vicinity of Fortress Monroe, Va., where for a 

 number of years I have been in the habit of visiting on the first warm 



'These have been collected by Mr. Howard (Ann. Kept. Dept. Agric. 1887 (1888), 

 pp. 51-52). 



18391 — No. 5 5 



