94 



By July most of the old, hibernating brood are dead, and the 

 new generation is nearly full grown; far enough advanced by har- 

 vest to abandon the fields of wheat and barley for the nearest 

 available food — oats or corn, if these are adjacent, otherwise, and 

 more rarely, grass. Making their way in on foot they will at first 

 attack only the borders ot these fields; but later — by the first of 

 August at the farthest— the bugs not already located will begin to 

 fly, and so will become generally disseminated through fields of 

 corn. Not infrequently, especially to the southward, many of the 

 old bugs fly as soon as they get the use of their wings; but as 

 only a small part of them have passed their final moult before 

 small grain ripens, most of the generation must still search for 

 food on foot. In the corn the eggs are laid behind the sheaths of 

 the lower leaves, and under the protection of this retreat the 

 young hatch and mature, only coming out upon the exposed sur- 

 faces of the leaves when they become superabundant or when they 

 get their growth. The full grown bugs fly freely, singly, but not 

 in swarms, whenever their food fails them where they are. Earely 

 we find in the southern part of the State some trace of a third 

 generation in a season, the young of these appearing in Septem- 

 ber in the corn — but these are in too small numbers to have any 

 practical importance. The generations are thus mainly two; one 

 breeding chiefly in wheat and baj^ey, and the other almost wholly 

 in corn — the adults of this latter brood passing the winter as 

 above described. 



Each female is believed to be capable of laying about five hun- 

 dred eggs. 



FOOD PLANTS. 



The chinch bug is practically confined for food to the great family 

 of grasses (Graminese), which contains all the cereals and grasses, 

 tame and wild. Some of these, however, it feeds upon with re- 

 luctance, if at all; and among the ordinary objects of its food it 

 has its very decided preferences. Among the ci^op plants, wheat, 

 barley and rye, sorghum, broom corn and Indian corn, millet and 

 Hungarian grass are its favorite foods, with oats and timothy 

 clearly second to these; while among the wild grasses, its prefer- 

 ence is for fox-tail grass and "tickle grass" (Setaria and Eragrostis). 

 It seems to prefer timothy to blue grass, not really relishing 

 either as a general thing* — and takes to the crab grasses (Panicum) 

 not at all, or only as a last resort. It is reported by old settlers 

 to feed on the wild prairie grasses, and to have bred upon them 

 freely when the country was new; but it is not known what species 

 of these grasses it alfects. Nothing seems more precisely to its 

 liking than the Setarias (fox-tail, Hungarian, and millet), unless 

 it be sorghum and broom corn. 



' It, Hhonld be noted, liowever, that tho chinch buf? may breed abuudiintly, with doatructive 

 conHeiiucmrcs, in tiiuolliy meadows and pastiiroH, although in the Wof4t this seems not to have 

 been a coimion occurrence. A limited but severe attack in New Yorlv in 1HH2, was almost 

 wholly confined to tlioso situations. 



