Origin and Diffusion of Blissus leiuopterus and Murgantia histrionica. 141 



THE PROBABLE ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION OF BLISSUS 

 LEUCOPTERUS AND MURGANTIA HISTRIONICA * 



By F. M. Webster, M. S. 



That anything new could be said of an insect, so old and well- 

 known as Blissus leucopterus, the common Chinch Bug, would appear 

 almost incredible, for it probably has been more often discussed than 

 any other of our insect fauna, in our entomological publications, 

 especially such as deal with entomology as one of the agricultural 

 sciences, and by entomologists whose names will forever be connected 

 with the science of entomology in this country. An examination of 

 the literature of this species, however, will show that much of it is, to 

 a great extent a repetition of the older writers ; and we seem to have 

 been going on in this way, without stopping to ask ourselves whether 

 or not these older writers were strictly correct, and whether their 

 statements would stand the test of modern, severe scrutiny. The old 

 and commonly accepted theory, in regard to the original habitat and 

 later diffusion of this species, is that it originally occupied the country 

 along the Atlantic, throughout Virginia and the Carolinas, from 

 whence it spread westward in the wake of grain growing. The theory 

 is based upon the fact that it is from these localities that reports first 

 came of its ravages in cultivated fields ; and it was described by 

 Thomas Say while residing at New Harmony, Indiana, from a speci- 

 men from this locality, and therefore, it is supposed, must have after- 

 wards spread westward and northward. Now while I am free to say 

 that this theory may be the correct one, we have really no proof what- 

 ever to sustain it, while we do know that over its entire habitat, in 

 North America at least, it is fully capable of sustaining itself on both 

 wild and cultivated grasses, and that its occurrence does not depend 



* Read before the Ohio Academy of Science, December 28, 1895. 



