93 



On the hill back of Richmond village, on Staten Island, I have seen them 

 carrying heavy harvest flies to these burrows, several of which are dug there 

 nearly every summer. The task of carrying so great a burden as a Cicada is a 

 particularly laborious one, and they do not fly very fast when thus heavily laden. 

 Sometimes they drag the harvest-flies a distance along the ground, and sometimes 

 they resort to an ingenious method to finally get them to their burrows. 



In August, 1889, I observed a Stizus carrying a Cicada and flying slowly up 

 a hill side. It lit at the base of a black birch on the hill top, and dragged the 

 harvest-fly, holding the smooth dorsal surface to the bark, to the topmost branches 

 finally disappearing among the leaves. I did not see it leave the tree, for I was 

 unable to command a view on all sides at the sa ne time, and tlien there was a 

 neighboring birch whose branches interlocked with the one where the hornet was. 

 I satisfied myself that it did leave, by climbing up and violently shaking the 

 branches and tree top, Stizus employs this method of transporting the heavy- 

 Cicada ; it climbs the tree with the insect, and then flies from the branches, the 

 -excessive weight gradually bringing it to the ground again but nearer to its 

 burrow. 



Professor Morse, in his annual address before the American Association in 

 1887, notices the following : — Dr. Thomas Meehan describes a hornet that was 

 gifted with great intelligence. He saw this insect struggling with a large locust 

 in unsuccessful attempts to fly away with it. After several fruitless efforts to 

 fly up from the ground with his victim, he finally drascged it fully thirty feet to 

 a tree, to the top of which he laboriously ascended, still clinging to his burden, 

 and having attained this elevated position he flew off" in a horizontal direction 

 with the locust." 



Commenting upon this, Mr. C. G. Rockwood, jr., in Science for August 19th, 

 1887, gives an account of a large insect evidently of the wasp family, that carried 

 ■a Cicada for a distance of twenty feet up a maple tree and then flew away with 

 it as described above. 



Wishing to ascertain the relative weights of these insects, I had dried speci- 

 mens, including pins, weighed in a druggist's scales. Cicada tihicen weighed 

 thirteen grains and Stizus speciosus seven and one half. — W. T. Davis, Tompkins- 

 ville, Staten Island, N. Y. 



EXPERIMENTS FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF CHINCH BUGS. 



BY PROF. F, H. SNOW, UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, LAWRENCE. 



These experiments have been continued through the two seasons of 1889 

 and 1890 and have been remarkably successful. As entomologist to the Kansas 

 State Board of Agriculture I had prepared an article for the annual meeting of 

 that Board in January, 1889, stating what was known at that time upon the 

 subject, and calling attention to the investigations of Professors Forbes, Burrill 

 and Lugger. In June, 1889, a letter was received from Dr. J. T Curtiss, of 

 Dwight, Morris County, Kansas, announcing that one of the diseases mentioned 

 in the article (Entomophthora) was raging in various fields in that region, and 

 stating that in many places in fields of oats and wheat the ground was fairly 

 white with the dead bucrs. Some of these dead bugs were at once obtained and 

 experiments were begun in the entomological laboratory of the University. It 

 was found that living healthy bugs, when placed in the same jar with the dead 



