14 



lands of a drainage district about the 21 th ol May, or as soon as 

 the corn was large enoug-h to afford them food. They made their 

 appearance, he says, in new ground the previous year, but were 

 still more numerous and destructive in 1*)()3. 



/ixtraordi'narv Jnjttrx to ( 'oni in (ircoic ( \)iiii/\'. — Under date 

 of May 28, 1902, I received the following letter from John C. Hridgc- 

 watcr, of Bridgewater, Greene county, 111.: 



" I am sending- you to-day about three hundred bugs which 

 we call elephant bugs. We give them this name because of their 

 color, the enormous size as compared with that of other pests in- 

 this section, and the trunk or bill. Their destructiveness is un- 

 paralleled, as you may judge for yourself when I say that farmers 

 are paying five cents a dozen for them and the boys are bringing 

 them in by the thousand. More than ten thousand have been 

 captured and put to death in less than two days on the Hartwell 

 ranch alone, the foreman paying five cents a dozen for every one of 

 them. On Saturday last he was looking over the ranch and thought 

 that he had one eighty-acre field of corn secure, but on the Tues- 

 day following there was not enough left to plow. 



" The bugs will lock their legs around a stalk of corn and run 

 their trunk right through it as if it were a spike driven through a 

 pine board. 



" It is costing us hundreds of dollars as tribute to bug-hunt- 

 ing expeditions, plowing our land over and replanting where a 

 week ago we had as good a stand as heart could wish. " 



Mr. Bridgewater also gives an amusing account of contests be- 

 tween his " elephant bugs" and young chickens, and on this point 

 his statements are corroborated by a letter from another corrc- 

 s])oniloiit received in June, 1*)00, and accompanied by a specimen. 

 In both cases chickens had undertaken to devour these beetles, but 

 the latter had saved themselves b}^ clasping their legs around the 

 beak of the bird, and holding on so vigorously as to make it impos- 

 sible for the chicken to open its mouth. 



The box of beetles accompanying Mr. Bridgewater's letter 

 were mainly .S'. or/ifrns, although a few S. _pcriiiia.x were among 

 the lot.* 



In consequence of this letter I sent Mr. R. S. G. Titus to 

 Bridgewater early in June to study the outbreak there, and again 

 early in July. He spent the llth and 12th of June on the Hartwell 

 ranch, which is situated on the Illinois River at the mouth of Hur- 

 ricane Creek, seven miles west of Koodhouse, in Greene county. 



*See alst) the discussion of S. perii/tax in tlu' i)ros(.'nt ,iiiii:le. 



