70 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO GARDEN AND ORCHARD CROPS. 



confined. On the 9th a peculiar buzzing sound, as loud as that of the 

 largest bumble bee, was heard near the window, and again on the 10th, 

 when the beetle was discovered and returned to the jar. 



This individual had been supplied with strawberries, the only fruit 

 available, but had not partaken of these or of any food whatever. The 

 sand with which her rearing jar was supplied was kept moist, and 

 a certain degree of nourishment may have been furnished by this„ 

 Practically speaking, she lived eighty days without food, during which 

 time 36 eggs were deposited. Upon dissection of the beetle a large 

 number of eggs in different stages of development were found, upward 

 of a hundred by estimate, but as decomposition had set in the exact 

 number was not ascertained. 



HABITS OF THE LARVA. 



The value of recording fragmentary observations, if careful and con- 

 clusive, is well exemplified in the case of the present species. The 

 writer's first notes on the larva were the first to shed any light on its 

 true habits, and were totally at variance with those previously con- 

 ceived by entomologists. LeBaron, who wrote of this species in 1874 

 (Fourth 111. Kept, p. 91), was of the opinion that the larvae lived in 

 rotten wood. The general impression of naturalists was, I believe, 

 that the larva fed upon rootlets of grass and other herbaceous plants, 

 while certain few expressed the opinion that the larva was in some 

 manner dependent upon the friendly assistance of ants, this belief 

 being based upon their known occurrence in ants' nests. 



The larva, as was first pointed out by the writer in volume vii of 

 Insect Life (p. 272), feeds, like that of the allied Allorhina nitida, or 

 green June beetle, in manure and in rich soil containing an abundance 

 of humus, and not upon the roots of grass and other herbaceous plants, 

 as was previously supposed. The observations of the writer on the 

 sj>ecies referred to were made in July and August of 1890, and were 

 interrupted as previously explained by an unlooked-for absence. 



Mr. M. Y. Slingerland during the year 1896 obtained larva? in manure, 

 and succeeded in rearing the species and in making certain observations 

 and descriptions of the same, the details of which have been brought 

 together in an illustrated article published in the Canadian Entomolo- 

 gist for March, 1897 (vol. xxix, pp. 50-52). 



Mr. Slingerland wrote that "the dull leaden hue of the body, due to 

 the contents o.f the food canal, indicated that its food consisted of dead 

 vegetable matter rather than living roots." There was no evidence of 

 the larva having fed on the roots of living plants. 



Dr. J. A. Lintner, in his twelfth report as State entomologist of New 

 York for 1896 (1897), page 314, states that according to the observations 

 of Botanist Peck larva? in manure were placed on a few hills of corn in 

 a garden, and that on the following day one of the hills was noticed 

 to have been cut down as if by cutworms. Upon digging around 

 the stalks two larva? of Euphoria but no cutworms were discovered — 



