132 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



have done so. The reports say that about June the eggs are 

 laid on the ground or among the roots of plants, and that 

 this process of egg-laying lasts fifteen or twenty days, and that they 

 number about 500 for each female. In fifteen days the eggs hatch 

 out. The bright red larvae remain under ground, sucking at the 

 roots of plants. The full grown insect is one-twelfth of an inch 

 long, of a black color, with white wings, and appears from the 

 middle of July to August. A second brood hatches out still later 

 in the summer, and further south a third brood. Evidently some of 

 the perfect insects survive the winter, harboring under rails, boards, 

 leaves and grass. I found them frozen solid, apparently, during the 

 last winter, when hunting for locust eggs, but they soon revived 

 when brought into a warm room. Now here I have found the 

 chinch bug vary from this history in this, that it occasionally de- 

 posits its eggs on the lower part of the plant itself, as I ascertained 

 by bringing such plants home an 1 observing their transformations. 

 As the damage done by this insect sometimes in western States like 

 Illinois reaches as high as $73,000,000 in a season, it is important to 

 note the remedies that have been devised against them. Lady bugs 

 (Coccinellidae) destroy them, as also lace-wing flies. During the last 

 summer I dissected several quail, whose stomachs were filled w r ith 

 these bugs. The protection of quail, therefore, must have a salu- 

 tary influence on restraining their increase. The methods devised 

 against the chinch bugs are various. Among the best are ditching 

 to keep them from traveling from one field to another, and keeping 

 the ground constantly stirred. They appear to dislike ground that 

 is yielding, or that dirties their bodies. By ditching, as many as 

 forty bushels have been destroyed in one day. One plan is to drag 

 a log through the ditch to kill them, and another is to dig pits in 

 the ditches in which they are buried or otherwise destroyed. 



THE ARMY WORM 



(Ltuicania unipucto^) as far as I know, has not yet done any injury 

 to the crops of the State. I was at least three years in the State 

 before I found a single moth of this insect. The first one I found 

 was in the autumn of 1867. No more came across my path till 

 1869. The first autumn (that of 1871) that I spent at the Univer- 

 sity, I found great numbers, and on the whole they have been in- 

 creasing ever since. Here probably two broods are raised in a year. 

 The eggs are laid near the roots of the prairie grass in June or July, 

 and lie dormant till the next spring. 



