THE SOUTHERN CORN LEAF-BEETLE. 7 



Dr. Thomas Say (Say, 1824) described the adult as follows: 



Body black, slightly bronzed, covered with dense, robust cinereous hairs; antennae 

 dull rufous at base; thorax with three equal, equidistant teeth on the lateral edge; 

 elytra, lateral edge minutely dentated; tip simple; anterior tibiae and posterior 

 thighs one-toothed. Length, nearly one-fifth of an inch. 



The beetle seems to prefer to feed early in the morning, late in the 

 evening, or at night, or on cloudy days ; very rarely it feeds during 

 the heat of the day, and at this time of the day it is generally 

 found under clods of dirt or down beneath the leaves of the plants. 



HIBERNATION. 



The adult beetles issue from pupal cells about the middle of July in 

 central Arkansas and the 1st of August in southern Kansas, emergence 

 extending over a period of about one month. They do considerable 

 feeding on the kernels of unripe ears of corn and buds of cocklebur 

 before entering hibernation, which begins early in the fall. They 

 have been observed by Mr. W. E. McConnell hibernating under piles 

 of corn husks, in fodder shocks, in cornfields, and also in clumps of 

 Andropogon scoparius, Andropogon virginicus, and Cyperus rotundus. 

 Mr. A. H. Rosenfeld (Rosenfeld, 1911) found one adult hibernating 

 in Spanish moss (TiUandsia usneoides). 



Adults were found in hibernation in the fall of 1913 throughout 

 bottom-land cornfields near Paris, Ark., these being the same fields 

 that had been devastated the previous spring. In a large cotton 

 field adjacent to one of these cornfields beetles were found in large 

 numbers under piles of rubbish, in the open unpicked cotton bolls, 

 and a large number were found lying on the ground beneath a large 

 pile of recently picked cotton. 



While investigating the hibernation of this insect in central Arkan- 

 sas the writer's attention was called to a cotton gin from the dirt 

 spout of which the beetles were being shaken from cotton which was 

 then being brought in from the fields for ginning. A double handful 

 of living beetles were thus collected in a short time. The manager of 

 the cotton gin informed the writer that he had been noticing these 

 beetles since early fall and that they were more numerous in late No- 

 vember. This cotton gin was located in the Arkansas River bottoms 

 and only such cotton as was grown in the immediate vicinity was 

 ginned. 



After leaving this locality, the writer visited a gin located near 

 the edge of the foothills, where both hill-land cotton and bottom- 

 land cotton were being ginned. The bottom-land cotton produced a 

 few beetles, but the upland cotton was apparently free from them. 

 In the town of Paris, two large cotton gins were visited and searched for 

 this beetle, but owing to the fact that most of the cotton they were 

 receiving at this time was from the hill land, none of the beetles could 



