421 
Ceo trali- Americana, those I am able to find on the map are all on the 
coast. Extended cultivation of grain in Central America is of ancient 
date, and we should expect to find the chinch bug widely distributed 
there inland, but for the present the Volcano di Chiriqui, in Panama, is 
the only inland locality on record. The locality Tamaulipas. Mexico, is 
too indefinite to tell whether or not the specimens collected there came 
from the seashore, and the same holds true of the locality Cuba. 
Various ^orth American maritime plants and insects occur also on 
the sandy beaches of the Great Lakes or still inhabit the ancient shore 
line of the Cretaceous ocean west of the Mississippi Valley (see Dr. 
J. L. Le Conte's address in Proc. A. A. A. S., 1875, pp. 4, 5), but whether 
or not the chinch bug has been among them can not longer be ascer- 
tained in the absence of early records, although I believe that the 
assumption of its occurrence on the shores of Lake Erie previous to the 
time when it was generally distributed inland explains the doubtful 
points in Mr. Van Duzee's article on the occurrence of the chinch bug 
at Buffalo, X. Y. (Can. Ent., vol. xvm, 188C, p. 219). 
Furthermore, there are some other points which deserve to be men- 
tioned in this connection : The appearance of the chinch bug in such 
prodigious numbers ; its extreme power of destruction in the Western 
States, and its marked susceptibility to the influence of moist weather 
are in striking contrast with the behavior of all other insects which are 
truly native of these States; the apparently complete absence of par- 
asitic insect enemies also strongly points to the fact that it is an intro- 
duced species, in this instance not from foreign countries but from our 
coast regions. 
The actual proof that the chinch bug did not occur in former years 
in the Western States can not longer be given. From Professor Forbes's 
remarks (Insect Life, vol. i, p. 249) it would appear that the insect 
was in the Mississippi Valley as early as 1823. Still the fact that Say, 
when in 1831 he described Lygceus leucopterus from a single specimen 
taken on the coast of Virginia, had never found the chinch bug in the 
Westj although he had been a resident of southern Indiana for six years 
and had previously traveled extensively in what was then called Mis- 
souri Territory, shows at least that it was not generally distributed 
over the Western States. As far as the Eastern States are concerned, 
the early records,* fragmentary as they are, show that the chinch bug 
gradually spread inland from the coast regions of the Carolinas. 
The hibernation of the chinch bug in its maritime home has been 
observed by me only at a single place, but the characteristic features 
of the sand dunes are so uniform all along our coast that the experi- 
ence in one locality undoubtedly holds true for all. This particular 
locality is in the immediate vicinity of Fortress Monroe, Va.. where for a 
number of years I have been in the habit of visiting on the first warm 
* These have been collec ted by Mr. Howard (Ann. Kept. Dept. Agric. 1887 (1888), 
pp. 51-52). 
18391— No. 5 .3 
