44 



grain lands in this section are infested by the Hessian Fly. A section 

 of country in Sonoma County, located between Petaluina and Santa 

 Bosa, is also infested. I have not examined other sections reported. 

 About six years ago it appeared in a field of grain (wheat) near Yallejo, 

 and has spread since that time. Mr. Brownlee, of Creston, about 10 

 miles from where it first started, lost 380 acres of wheat in 1883/' 



Specimens which Mr. Cooke sent with his letter proved the correct- 

 ness of his determination. If the insect has really, as he states, been a 

 denizen of California for six years, it seems strange that the fact should 

 never before have been authoritatively placed on record. We have 

 been on the lookout for such a fact ever since the iHiblication of Dr. 

 Packard's first map of the distribution of the species,* and when Mr. 

 Cooke in his work on injurious insects, in 1883t, stated that he had no 

 knowledge of its existence in California, we accepted his evidence as 

 practically conclusive. 



We shall now watch its further spread in the State with interest, 

 more particularly to see whether the energetic Califoruians will fight 

 this pest any more successfully than the Eastern farmers have done. 



It is worthy of note also that the False Chinch Bug (Nysius destructor) 

 has done great damage in vineyards in California during the summer, 

 and that it was also reported as injuring rye and wheat. 



" AYheel Bugs " destroying Hive Bees.— In October we received 

 from Mr. C. M. G-ibbens, of Winchester^ Va., a live specimen of the 

 Wheel Bug (Prionotus cristatus), with the information that it was found 

 in abundance upon his grounds and preyed upon his honey bees, lurk- 

 ing about their hives. Although the Wheel Bug is, so far as we kuow, 

 exclusively a predaceous insect, this particular habit has not, we think, 

 before been observed. 



Aoonodertts pallipes injurious to Corn (Plate I, fig. 2). — This 

 common ground beetle was, until quite recently, supposed to be strictly 

 carnivorous. In 1882, Professor Forbes, in the Twelfth Report of the 

 State Entomologist of Illinois, page 27, recorded that he found this 

 species (referring to it as A. comma) under the clods and in the ground 

 about the roots of corn in a field, which was injured by the Corn-root 

 Worm (Biabrotica longicornis), and on examination of the stomach con- 

 tents they were found to have partaken both of animal and vegetable 

 food. In the same report (p. 43) he states that he found them in a field 

 of corn infested by the Chinch Bug, and examination showed that they 

 had fed in part on Chinch Bugs and other insects, but also on vegeta- 

 tion, which appeared to have been roots of corn. On page 111 (loc. tit.) 

 he states that a dissection of the stomachs of fifteen specimens of this 



* Report upon the Rocky Mountain locust and other iusects, &c. Ninth Ann. Rept. 

 U. S. Geol. and Geogr. Surv. Terr., Washington, 1877. 

 t "Injurious insects of the orchard, vineyard," &c. By Matthew Cooke, Sacramento, 



1883. 



