﻿OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 39 



make any material impression on the vast army of chinches which 

 invade our grain fields; neither are they of such a nature as to be 

 greatly encouraged, or artificially multiplied for man's good, as in 

 wholesale measures of destruction it is impossible to separate the 

 sheep from the goats. Yet it will afford some satisfaction to the farmer 

 to be able to recognize even these few friends which assist, in their 

 quiet way, to keep his inveterate foe in check. 



" As long ago as 1861, Mr. Walsh, in his Essay upon the Injurious 

 Insects of Illinois^ published facts which tended to show that four 

 [Fig. 5] distinct species of Ladybirds preyed upon the [fi^. o.] 

 Chinch Bug.* The first of these four is the Spot- S l^f^ 

 WL ted Ladybird {Hippodamia maculata^ DeGeer? Tf/jP y^;^ 

 Fig. 5), which also preys upon a great variety of\^\jjii|r v 

 Ladybird. Other insocts, attacking both the eggs of the QqIo-^"*^^'^''^^'^"' 

 rado Potato-beetle and those of certain Bark lice. 



"In corroboration of the fact of its preying on the Chinch Bug, I 

 may state, that the Rev. Chas. Peabody, of Sulphur Springs, informs 

 me that he has repeatedly found it so feeding on his farm. The sec- 

 ond species is the Trim Ladybird (CoGGinella n^unda Say, Fig. 6), 

 which is distinguishable at once from a great variety of its brethren 

 by having no black spots upon its red wing-cases. The other two are 

 much smaller insects, belonging to a genus {Scymnus) of Ladybirds, 

 most of the species of which are quite small and of obscure brown 

 colors, and hard to be distinguished by the popular eye from other 

 beetles, the structure of which is very different, and which therefore 

 belong to very different groups and have very different habits. 



"In the Autumn of 1864, Dr. Shimer ascertained that the Spotted 

 Ladybird which has been sketched above, preys extensively upon the 

 Ohinch Bug. In a particular field of corn, which had been sown thick 

 for fodder, and which was swarming with chinch bugs, he found, as 

 he says, that this Ladybird, ' could be counted by hundreds upon every 

 square yard of ground after shaking the corn; but the chinch bugs 

 were so numerous that these hosts of enemies made very little per- 

 -ceptible impression among them ' 



"In the same Autumn Dr. Shimer made the additional discovery, 

 that in the very same field of fodder-corn the chinch bugs were 

 ipreyed upon by a very common species of Lacewing-fly, which he 

 described in January, 1865,f as the Illinois Lacewing {Chrysopa llli- 



*See Trans. III. St. Agric. Society, IV, pp. 34G-9. 

 t Proc. Ent. Soc. Phil., IV, pp. 208-12. 



