139 
_ chief by destroying the silk before it has served for the fertilization of 
the grain, and causing thus a partial blasting of the ear. They often 
eat the pollen of smartweed and ragweed among the corn, and outside 
the fields are very abundant upon thistle blossoms, and likewise upon 
heads of red clover, the pollen and petals of which they feed upon. By 
Professor French, of Carbondale, LL, they are said sometimes to infest 
the bean plant; Dr. Boardman, of Stark county, reported them as 
abundant on cucumber and squash vines, and we have repeatedly seen 
them late in the year (October 11 to December 16) gnawing into ripe 
pumpkins in the field, eating through the outer hard coat, and burying 
% themselves in the pulp toa depth of nearly half an inch. We have found 
3 them feeding on fiowers of Helianthus, eoldenrod, and other Composite, 
E and on the pollen of sorghum and of squash; and Professor Webster has 
~seen them on the blossoms of the cotton plant. A farmer in De Kalb 
- county asserts that they eat the pulp of apples where the skin has been 
= broken from some other cause, enlarging such injuries so as seriously 
to damage the fruit. This same fact was reported to me some years ago 
from Grundy county, by Mr. O. B. Galusha, then Secretary of the State 
= Horticultural Society, thin-skinned apples apparently suffering worst 
= and, according to the judgment of my informant, being thus ‘injured 
zs without the assistance of other insects. They have been repeatedly de- 
tected by us beneath the husks of ears of corn, where the tips had been 
exposed or injured by birds or grasshoppers, feeding here on the broken 
E grains. In one instance the beetle had apparently made its way through 
the husk itself, and was feeding upon the soft erains beneath. By 
. Professor Burrill, of the U niversity of Illinois, it was found in 1889 
(September 30) feeding upon a fungus belonging to the genus Phallus; 
and I demonstrated by dissections in 1882 the fact that it sometimes 
feeds largely on the smaller fungi—blights, rusts, etc.* 
LIFE HISTORY. 
This species is single-brooded, as far as known. Although a few 
beetles may occasionally linger late in open winters,—to December 16 
i: of the present year (1892) for example—and as a rare exception may 
= even pass the winter alive, the species hibernates almost invariably as an 
egg in the earth.t As a rule, which is, sa far as known, practically 
without exception, these eggs are deposited in fields of corn and hatch 
there the following spring—at just what date has not been precisely 
ascertained. ‘The larvee have first been detected in Central Illinois June 
a 10. They were found by me less than half grown near Polo, in North- 
ern Illinois, June 14, 1883. As the beetle was reported by an excellent 
observer (Dr. E. R. Boardman) to have occurred one season in south- 
eastern Jowa as early as June 25, some larve must hatch by the begin- 
ning of that month. Pupation can scarcely begin later than June 20 
if Dr. Boardman’s date for the beetle is correct, and the same observer 
* Twelfth Rep. State Hnt. Ill., p. 23. 
+ I have in my office collection two specimens (one male and one female) ob- 
; tained March 14, 1883, at Normal, Illinois, with a quantity of miscellaneous insects 
“ eollected from their hibernating quarters. On the other hartd, beetles collected from 
: pumpkins at Urbana, November 2, 1892, and placed in breeding cages with pieces 
of pumpkin as food, had died in large numbers by November 20; a very few were 
still alive December 4; two remained December 17; but December 28 all were dead. 
