32 PAPEES OX CEREAL AND FOE AGE INSECTS. 



It is very apparent that wheat has a decided effect on the presence 

 of the chinch bugs, as indicated hi the localities where the wheat was a 

 failure this spring. 



The dry weather had its effect on the fungus, Sporotrichum globuli- 

 ferum, and it has not occurred in the fields this season (1911). Only 

 once has it been possible to secure it in the laboratory. Continued 

 search has been made for it in all kinds of places, especially after the 

 rains in May and in July, beyond which latter month this record does 

 not extend. 



HIBERNATION. 



At the beghining of the investigation the advisability of getting 

 rid of the chinch bugs before they entered the young wheat in the 

 early spring was very evident, for when once they have reached 

 there they are not readily accessible. This led to a series of observa- 

 tions on their hibernating habits for the purpose of determining the 

 places preferred by the bugs. 



The current belief that most of the bugs pass the winter beneath 

 corn husks, among cornstalks, in fence rows, under boards and rails, 

 in heaps of rubbish, in straw stacks, along hedgerows, and in fodder 

 shocks is not borne out by investigations in Kansas and Oklahoma 

 following a severe winter. When the bugs are very abundant, as 

 they were in Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma during the fall of 1909, 

 a few may be found in any of these situations, especially hi the early 

 fall. The most of the bugs find their way to thick bunches of clump- 

 forming grasses in waste places, in pastures and meadows, and along 

 roadsides and railroad rights of way. During late fall and early 

 winter great numbers of living bugs can be found in corn husks, 

 fodder shocks, piles of kafir, cane, and in most any place covered with 

 vegetation — even in alfalfa fields where they find no food. In the 

 spring, however, very few living bugs but many dead ones can be 

 found in such situations, indicating that most* of them died there. 



They find much better protection in the thicker and more dense, 

 than in the thinner grasses and under trash in open fields. The bugs 

 seem to prefer the thicker grasses, though they are quite often found 

 in other situations, and after open winters, as the one of 1910-11, 

 many living ones can be found under very thin protection. Many 

 living chinch bugs were taken from trash collected hi an alfalfa field 

 and some were found in corn fodder and corn husks lying on the 

 ground on February 24, 1911, at Wellington, Kans., though most of 

 the chinch bugs are at this time in the thick bunches of sedge grass. 



The situation in southern Illinois for the spring of 1911 was quite 

 similar to that in southern Kansas; there were abundant clumps of 

 Andropogon along roadsides, in fields, and in woodlands, and more 

 chinch bugs were found in these clumps of grasses than in trash, 



