era MTOR 
- Nine of these were isolated, and from tem larve hatched on the 7th of 
July. 
May 8, 1891, both sexes of this species were confined in a barrel 
of earth sunk in the ground and planted to corn, the beetles being sup- 
plied with elm leaves as food. They deposited eggs June 5 from two to 
three inches below the surface, but the enclosure being invaded by a 
parasitic fungus (Sporotrichum), the experiment came to an end before 
the eggs had hatched. 
Observations on Lachnoslerna fusca ave closely parallel to the fore- 
going. Beetles to the number of twenty-eight, collected from the earth 
in corn fields and in sod from April 8 to 28, were placed in the insec- 
tary, where they commenced to emerge May 1, but began almost at once 
to die. They were fed, as above, on oak, ash, chestnut, and elm, pre- 
ferring the oak and the elm. On the 4th of June two beetles were 
found in cavities in the earth below the sod, one of them with a freshly 
laid egg just under the abdomen. Fungous dise vase appearing in. this lot 
of beetles interrupted the ae pe May 8, 1891, a large number of 
beetles of L. fusca caught at a lamp or dug from the earth were used 
for a similar experiment. June 1 oviposition began, the eggs being 
Benoited about two inches below the surface, among the corn roots 1 
the breeding cage, singly, as before, without special preparation of the 
cavity for their reception. 
A similar trial with L. rugosa, taken from earth and weeds at Ur- 
bana June 1, 1891, gave us the eggs June 11, disposed singly about an 
inch below the surface : and in another, with L. gibbosa. collected May 
20, the eggs were found June 5 about three inches below the surface in 
the loose earth of the breeding cage, placed separately, but clustered 
somewhat, three to six in a group. 
The eggs of all these species agreed in color, shape, and general ap- 
pearance with those obtained from LL. inversa, as described above. 
Larval Period.—Our knowledge of the length of life of the white 
grubs in the larval stage is based solely upon inferences mostly drawn 
from the varying sizes of the grubs that appear in collections made at 
any given time. Since the eggs are all deposited practically within a 
month, and since the larva grows but slowly, differences in size due to 
variations in time of hatching must be but small. It is easily seen, how- 
ever, from almost any large collection made in spring or early sum- 
mer at one time and place that grubs of the same species or group can 
be readily assorted into two lots differing notably in size, and never, so 
far as my observation goes, into more than two.* This is readily to be 
explained on the supposition that the larger specimens are two years old 
that season and that the smaller have hatched from eggs laid the preced- 
ing summer. Upon this supposition the Lachnosterna larva lives as a 
grub a trifle over two full years, changes to the pupa and imago at the 
beginning of the third year of He iiger and emerges from the earth an 
adult, prepared to lay its eggs, at the end of this three-year period. 
The growing grubs feed, of course, only during the season of 
growing vegetation, usually retiring from the middle to the last of No- 
* TO verify this statement it is necessary that the observer should learn to dis- 
tinguish species, or at least groups of species, of these insects in the grub and larval 
stage, characters for which are given further on in this treatise. Adult grubs of 
eee of the smaller species might otherwise be mistaken for young of the larger 
es. 
