XII 



grain fed freely on both wheat and corn. In December, in 

 Edwards county, they were boring holes in the sides of the bin 

 as if for transformation; and adults occurred with the larvpe in 

 considerable abundance in May of the following year. 



One of the most remarkable features of the recent agricultural 

 development of the State is the organization of extensive drainage 

 operations and the opening up to cultivation of great tracts of 

 swamp land. As the original vegetation of these lands is peculiar, 

 the first crops raised there are exposed to peculiar insect attack 

 by species native to the swamp grasses, and I have watched with 

 interest not unmixed with apprehension the entomological conse- 

 quences of this improvement. A marked instance of possible mis- 

 chief of this kind presented itself in the summer of 1888, in the 

 form of an attack on corn and millet in one of these drainage 

 districts, by a snout beetle {Sphenopliorus ochreus) whose breed- 

 ing habits and history were at the time unknown. A full account 

 of the observations and experim^ents made in tlie investigation of 

 this species is given in a separate article; and with this I have 

 incorporated considerable new information concerning other injuri- 

 ous species of this genus. 



Abundant among the chinch bugs (whose continued devastations 

 in Southern Illinois have called for very full treatment in this 

 report) was a species occasionally noticed by economic entomolo- 

 gists known by them as the flea negro bug ( Thyreocoris puli- 

 carius). Its extraordinary abundance in whe^t fields at harvest 

 time in 1887 and 1888 had no visible connection with any injury 

 to grain, and experiments reported in another article show that it 

 fed rather upon certain abundant weeds. 



Injuries done by the coiiN boot louse (Aphis maidis ? Fitch) 

 were apparently neither more nor less abundant than in recent 

 years. Notable progress was made in the determination of obscure 

 points in the life history of this species, some of them open- 

 ing the way to experimental work for its extermination. The 

 supposed aerial form of this louse, which appears in mid- 

 summer upon the leaves of the corn, has been unusually rare 

 during the last two years — possibly because of the hot and dry 

 weather, so intense in 1887 as to whiten and kill, by a sort of sun- 

 stroke, innumerable leaves of corn in thrifty fields. 



The common grasshoppebs, so abundant in 1885 and 1886, were 

 rarely heard from in the period covered by this report, a few com- 

 I)laints frojn Southern Illinois —especially in 1888, from tlie extren]( 

 soutlieastern j)art of the State— being all the reports of noticeal)l(^ 

 damage which reached this office. At Centralia a five-yeai'-old 

 orchard was badly hurt by them in 1888, and at Shattuc, meadows 

 were damaged in 1887. The species involved were Pezofrfiix fc- 

 mur-rithmm and J\ (liffcrcniialis— the same ^Im < nm-l -ibun 

 dant in Northern Illinois tliree years before. 



