89 
ment by one month, they made up in May for what they had lost, and 
the majority of the beetles appeared at the usual time in Ji^me. 
The locomotion of the larva is peculiar. The larva secures a hold 
on a hair by means of its mouth ; then brings forward the end of the 
abdomen to secure a new hold, and stretches forward the rest of the 
body. Tho the larva is termed footless, it has, nevertheless, paired 
ventral fleshy tubercles which, from their anatomical relations, are evi- 
dently equivalent to the legs of other larvae ; also a median ventral pro- 
thoracic tubercle. These muscular tubercles assist in locomotion, 
especially on smooth surfaces. As the larva walks on the under side 
of a sheet of glass, slightly moistened, a suckerlike action of these 
tubercles is evident. 
The color of the larva is white at birth, but a green tinge appears 
as soon as the larva has taken its first meal of green plant tissue. 
Some larvae are yellow instead of green ; diseased larvae are generally 
yellow, tho not all yellow larvae are diseased. Now and then a larva is 
found having a decided blue tinge. 
When full grown the larva buries itself just imder the surface of 
the soil and makes an oval cell, against the smooth wall of which it 
spins the cocoon ; once in a while the cocoon is constructed among the 
bases of green clover stems. The cocoon, oval in form, consists of a 
coarse network of threads with round or oval meshes ; it is pale yellow 
at first, becoming brownish with age. The actual spinning is done 
with the mouth. The first threads are laid in haphazard fashion across 
one another ; but after a coarse framework has been made, the larva 
lays the later threads along beside the earlier ones, forming a stout 
network, and gradually reducing the meshes to small rounded holes. 
At intervals the supply of silk fluid in the mouth gives out ; then the 
larva reaches back to the end of the abdomen and by an assiduous 
process of nibbling secures a new supply of the silk fluid from the rec- 
tum, and resumes its spinning. This performance always occurs, and 
can be observed easily with a hand lens in the earlier stages of cocoon- 
spinning. Riley and J. A. Osborne were each partly correct in their 
accounts of the spinning (Riley, 1882, p. 175). 
The beetle eats its way out of the cocoon and enters upon a long 
and lazy existence of feeding by night and resting by day. Not until 
the last of August do the beetles arouse to reproductive activity. In 
summer they are sluggish in the daytime, under debris on the ground, 
but at night they are contrastingly alert. They reduce clover leaves to 
rags, beginning at the margins and eating inward, usually leaving the 
stout bases of the veins, but sometimes devouring the entire plant down 
to the ground — stalks, flower heads, and all. Incidentally, they spot 
the plants with a brown fluid. Like the larvae, they are quick to drop 
when approached. 
We have many times kept these beetles alive all summer, waiting 
for them to lay eggs. When the time comes they lay the conspicuous 
yellow eggs in profusion in the breeding-cages, with or without method, 
as the case may be. The female may scatter her eggs about promis- 
