﻿OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 29" 



the blades of grain, but far more often, and normally, underground, 

 upon the roots of the plants infested. These eggs are threehundredths 

 of an inch long, elongate oval, pale amber-colored and with one end 

 squarely docked off and ornamented with four little tubercles near 

 the centre. (Fig. 3, a.) They are deposited in li-ttle clusters, and the 

 young lice hatching from them are at first bright red and remain for 

 a considerable time underground, sucking the sap from the roots. A 

 wheat plant pulled from an infested field in the spring of the year, 

 will generally reveal hundreds of these eggs attached to the roots, 

 and at a somewhat later period, the young larvae will be found clus- 

 tering on the same, and looking like so many moving red atoms. As 

 the sequence will show, it is practically quite important that we know 

 the whereabouts these eggs are deposited ; yet they are so small and 

 so difficult of detection that the wildest theories were promulgated as 

 to the origin and birth of chinch bugs, until the question was settled 

 by the entomologist with his lens and microscope. The female occu- 

 pies from two to three weeks in depositing her eggs ; the egg requires 

 about two weeks to hatch, and the bug becomes full-grown and ac- 

 quires its wings in five or six weeks from hatching. 



Individuals maj'' be found of all sizes and ages throughout the 

 sumnier months, yet the great body of the first brood mature soon, 

 after the ripening of spring wheat. 



Insects generally lay all their eggs in single masses and in a com- 

 paratively brief time : in other words, the eggs in the ovaries are 

 almost simultaneously developed, and the female devotes the last of 

 her life to the single and comparatively brief act of oviposition, and 

 then perishes from exhaustion. In the Chinch Bug, however, as in 

 the Colorado Potato-beetle, Plum Curculio, etc., the ova continue to 

 develop for several weeks, and the eggs are laid from day to day in 

 small numbers. 



FLIGHT OF THE CHINCH BU(;. 



Though, as we have already seen, there is a dimorphous, short- 

 winged form, incapable of flight, and found more particularly in north- 

 ern latitudes, the normal, long-winged form is abundantly able to fly, 

 and is sometimes seen swarming in the air. This flight is most notice- 

 able at three periods in the year. First, during the early warm days 

 of Spring, when — issuing from their winter quarters — the individuals 

 of the second or hibernating brood perform their courtships, and the 

 females scatter over the wheatfields and seek the driest and most 

 open soil, that they may penetrate to the roots of the plants and there 

 consign their eggs. Secondly, in July, after wheat is harvested, and 

 the great body of the first brood have acquired wings and are per- 



