15 



This ranch contains five thousand acres, mostly bottom-lands re- 

 deemed for cultivation by chang-ing- the course of Hurricane Creek, 

 building- eleven miles of levee, and excavating- drainag-e ditches. 

 One of these ditches, twenty-five feet wide and six feet deep, drains 

 a larg-e bottom-land lake, the bed of which forms a considerable 

 part of the property. About 4,500 acres of this tract had been 

 broken up, much of it in the spring- of l'K)2, and 2,5<)() acres were 

 planted to corn this year. The 500 acres not under cultivation com- 

 prise swamp-lands still unbroken, bluff-lands mainly covered with 

 trees, and the eleven miles of ditch which drains the ranch. 



Several hundred acres of the corn on this place were more or 

 less infested, and in some of the fields the first planting was com- 

 pletely ruined and the second also badly eaten. I'lants attacked by 

 .S'. orhrcus were usually killed, the effect of the work of pertiiiax, 

 a smaller species, being- rather to dwarf and distort the g-rowth 

 than to kill the plant outright. 



On one ten-acre piece of corn which the manag-cr wished 

 especially to save, the beetles had been picked off by boys at a cost 

 of from three to five cents a dozen, and 10,400 were broug-ht in. In 

 badly infested fields from one to five beetles were found on every 

 stalk of corn. Careful search of several hundred plants failed to 

 discover any eggs in the stalks or about the roots. 



An observation of special interest was made at this place with 

 respect to the effect of fall plowing. Owing- to a temporary lack 

 of employment for the teams on this plantation a piece of sod had 

 been broken up the preceding- fall, the remainder of the tract lying- 

 unbroken until the following spring-. On this fall-plowed land, 

 which was merely a part of an undivided field, the only injured 

 corn was in the first two or three rows adjoining- the land plowed 

 in spring-, and the harm done here was evidently due to bill-bug-s 

 which had come in from the adjacent g-round. 



The commonest plant on the unplowed lands was the club- 

 rush ( Scirpus), and this often g-rows in considerable quantity on 

 cultivated land that has been broken only a year. Kggs and young- 

 larva;, evidently those of Splicnophorus orhreus, were found in the 

 bulbs of these rushes June 12, and the females were still heavy with 

 fully developed eggs. 



July 3, when this place was visited again, larva' were still com- 

 mon in the bulbs, owing- no doubt to continued hatching", and the 

 averag-e size was little if any g-reater than at the previous visit. 

 Beetles also were still abundant, and as much of the corn land was 

 now overflowed, — owing to extraordinary high water in the Illinois 

 Ri'v-er, — most of the bill-bugs had been driven to the higher and 



