21 
doned the fields, to any considerable extent, in search of food. A 
few were still feeding upon the kernels of corn at the tips of the ears. 
On the 25th, Dr. Boardman, of Elmira, found the abdomens of the 
females distended with eggs. At this time, at Normal, they were 
seen occasionally copulating, and occurred about equally upon tlowers 
of smartweed and ragweed and in the tips of the ears of corn. In 
one field where the corn had been attacked by blackbirds, which had 
torn open the husks and pecked and broken the skin of the kernels, 
the beetles were nearly all found in the ear, and scarcely any upon 
the weeds. ‘his fact indicates that the insect is commonly pre- 
vented from eating the corn by its inability to break the epidermis 
after the grain has commenced to harden. 
On the 27th, Dr. Boardman writes that in the mornings, when the 
air is cold, he finds the beetles hiding under the clods and in erey- 
ices in the ground. 
On the Ist of October, a letter from Mr. Sidney Lattin, of Shab- 
bona Grove, in DeKalb county, contained the following item: ‘‘I 
find, in gathering corn for feed, great numbers of the corn-beetle, 
and a load of snapped ears contains hundreds, if not thousands, of 
them.” 
On the 3d of October, they were noticed in the University grounds 
at Normal, probably feeding upon the blossoms of clover, with which 
the campus was covered. 
On the 7th, a few were still found in the silk of soft, green nub- 
bins of corn, and a few were obtaimed by sweeping dead ragweed 
and smartweed in the field; but the greenest clumps of smartweed 
were swarming with them. 
On the 13th, in a weedy field of corn from which the stalks had 
been cut, but very few beetles indeed were found either about the 
weeds or upon the ground or under clods, an hour’s search yielding 
only three specimens; but in an adjoining turnip-field they were 
quite numerous upon the leaves. 
On the 14th of October, they were noted as evidently very much 
less numerous than before, in the fields of corn which had previously 
been alive with them. 
On the 18th, I carefully searched the stalks and ground for hiber- 
nating beetles in one of the worst infested corn-fields, but found, in 
an hour’s time, only three living beetles and two dead ones, the 
latter covered with mold. In sweeping the weeds, but two or three 
would be taken in the course of a minute. The beetles had now 
certainly nearly all left the field, and eggs were found in the abdo- 
mens of none of those obtained. In the clover adjacent to the corn 
the Diabrotica was abundant, sometimes four or five specimens oc- 
curring on a head; but none were found at the roots of the grass 
or under matted vegetation. 
On the 14th of this month a careful search in a badly infested 
field gave only a single specimen, found alive in the ground, and 
another, dead, in the same situation. 
On the 8th of November, dead females were seen in the ground, 
often at a considerable depth, and frequently surrounded by clusters 
= the eggs which had been previously determined as those of Dia- 
rotica. 
