52 



wheat, — as yet uncut. Many adults being collected from each 

 situation, and separately bottled, those from corn laid eggs in the 

 bottle June 15, and those from wheat did not. Oviposition was 

 but just beginning that year in Southern Illinois May 1; and as 

 the interval between the laying of the egg and the appearance of 

 the adult is fifty-five to sixty days (forty-five at the lowest 

 estimate), the bugs breeding in corn June 14 were almost certainly 

 individuals of the hibernating generation, which had not yet 

 finished breeding when the ripening of the wheat warned them 

 away to fresher fields. Those still remaining in the wheat were 

 probably spent imagos, about to die. The number of very young 

 in the corn mentioned made it seem quite probable that this invasion 

 of the field by adults of the winter brood had begun some time 

 before my visit. Eggs of this same brood were taken by Mr. 

 Marten from the roots of nearly ripened wheat at Albion, June 

 13, 1888, brought to the office, and kept until they hatched. 



July 24, 1888, I found at Centralia a few chinch bugs' eggs in 

 corn behind the sheaths and even in longitudinal folds of the 

 dead blades of the leaf, but could discover none on or about the 

 roots. The imagos at this time were nearly all paired. 



At Albion, August 1, 1888, eggs were found sparingly by Mr. 

 Marten behind the sheaths of corn and rarely on the upper roots, 

 but in immense numbers on the roots of an abundant grass-weed, 

 Panicum crus-galli. On one stool of this plant were eighty-two 

 eggs, and on another one hundred and seventy-seven, — some 

 among the roots and others behind the sheathing bases of . the 

 leaves. August 24, eggs were found at Albion on roots of Hun- 

 garian grass, and on the stalks and blades of young wheat raised 

 for experiment with the Hessian fly. 



Solving timothy ivith wheat. — Although timothy growing with 

 w^heat certainly will not always protect it, both crops, in extreme 

 cases, yielding to the attack, that it will sometimes do so is shown 

 by the following instance reported to me by Mr. E. E. Chester, of 

 •Champaign county, Illinois: — 



A field of twenty-eight acres was sown to wheat in the fall of 

 1874, when the chinch bugs were innumerable throughout all this 

 region, twenty acres with timothy and the remaining eight with 

 out, timothy being sown on the latter in the spring. This eight 

 acre plot, like the rest in every respect except that mentioned, wa 

 overwhelmingly infested by the chinch bug, the grain at harves 

 yielding only seven bushels per acre, while the twenty acres, bear 

 ing a thrifty growth of fall timothy, remained wholly unaffecte 

 except for a short distance adjoining the other plot, and yielde 

 An average of twenty bushels to the acre. The latter wheat sol 

 as ''No. 1" at $1 per bushel, and the former as "rejected" at 6 

 cents. 



A similar observation is reported by Mr. J. A. Kelly, of Hazel 

 Doll, Cumberland county, in a letter dated Juno 25, 1887, in which 

 he says: "I accidentally discovered that by sowing timothy with 



