144 



Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



that the species was described by Thomas Say in 1831, while resident 

 of New Harmony, Indiana, the description being drawn up from a 

 specimen from the eastern shore of Virginia, while he at no time men- 

 tioned its occurrence elsewhere. Prof. S. A. Forbes, in the Sixteenth 

 Report of the State Entomologist of Illinois, p. 50, presents conclusive 

 evidence of the occurrence of this species, as early as 1823, in South- 

 eastern Illinois, and within twenty-five miles of New Harmony, Ind. 

 Say was a very busy man and may or may not have known of this 

 occurrence. Besides, in the Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of 

 Science for 1891. p. 158, I have shown a parallel case in which Say 

 seems to have overlooked species that occured even nearer to his home 

 than this. 



The only species of Simulium described by him was S. venustum, 

 which he found at Shippingsport, Falls of the Ohio. This is the falls 

 at Louisville, Kentucky. There are at present at least two species of 

 Simulium inhabiting the Wabash River, within a short distance (prob- 

 ably less than a mile) of New Harmony, and an oil painting by LeSueur, 

 now in the possession of the Owen family, shows that at an early day 

 this was even better adapted for a breeding place for these insects than 

 at present, and in all probability at least two species did occur there 

 unrecorded by Say. Thus the only data upon which to base the as- 

 sumption that the chinch bug moved westward with the advance of 

 agriculture is swept away, and we are forced into the conclusion that 

 it would have been able to sustain itself on the native flora, and that 

 there is nothing to prove that it did not do so. The fact of its attack- 

 ing cultivated plants, later on in the progress of agricultural develop- 

 ment, does not by any means necessarily imply a recent introduction. 

 All or nearly all native insects adapt themselves to cultivated plants 

 only when forced to do so by the encroachment of the latter upon 

 their natural food plants, and I think we can show that Blissus leuco- 

 pterus is not an exception. 



Fitch, Marlatt and Neal, have all observed the species hiberna- 

 ting among the native grasses, or else found them in late fall or early 

 spring in situations indicating that they had done so, and in the case 

 of Dr. Neal, this was observed a long distance from human habita- 

 tion. The aborigines, we know, were in the habit of burning over 

 the prairies and other grass producing areas, in the fall of the year, 

 which must necesarily have destroyed vast myriads of these insects 

 after the season of hibernation had begun. With the retreat of the 



