74 THE CHINCH BUG. 
equally perplexing, there it does not attack grain, but grass, whereas 
to the southward it is the grain fields that are devastated. In other 
words, throughout New England, New York, northeastern Ohio, north- 
ern Indiana, and the Dominion of Canada we have both the long and 
short winged forms occurring together, but depredating almost or quite 
exclusively upon timothy (Phleum pratense). 
In Ohio the line separating the habitat of the combined forms and 
that of the macropterous form, exclusively, exactly marks the line of 
separation between the most serious depredations and almost total 
immunity of attack on timothy meadows by chinch bugs. This line of 
demarcation at present may be indicated approximately by a line 
drawn from the vicinity of the city of Cleveland, on Lake Erie, to the 
point where the Ohio Eiver ceases to form the boundary between Ohio 
and West Virginia and enters Pennsylvania. To the west and south 
of this I have never seen a short-winged adult chinch bug, and timothy 
meadows are seldom attacked, and then only where fields of small 
grain or corn were not in easy reach; as, for illustration, where they 
happened to breed in a wheat field surrounded by timothy, and, when 
the grain was harvested, there was no other recourse left them but to 
attack the grass. In the opposite direction from our line, however, the 
conditions are quite the reverse. Here, while fields of wheat are occa- 
sionally badly injured, thousands of acres of timothy meadow have 
been entirely killed out from the attack of this insect during the last 
few years. 
So far as it is possible to determine, there are a considerable number 
of winged adults produced in this area every year — perhaps from 30 to 
50 per cent some seasons — and these breed in the grain fields; but at 
wheat harvest, instead of migrating to the corn, as is done elsewhere, 
they go by preference to the timothy meadows. In western New York, 
where both the long and short winged forms occur, Mr. Van Duzee 
writes me that he has never found an individual of either form in grain 
fields, but that they both literally swarm in timothy during some years. 
Dr. Lintner told me that in the serious outbreak of this pest in the 
meadows of New York in 1882 and 1883 about 20 per cent were of the 
short- winged form. Dr. Perkins has recorded an attack of chinch bug 
in a timothy meadow in northern Vermont. Whether or not the short- 
winged form was the depredator in this last-named locality I am unable 
to say, but, generally speaking, the short-winged form is unknown at 
any considerable distance from the coast, except in New York, Ohio, 
Ontario, and northern Indiana, and but rarely does it occur in either 
form in the two latter localities. 
Just why this short-winged form should occur in such abundance in 
the two States named is a matter that I am just at present unable 
fully to explain; but it does seem that this difference in food habits as 
between the two forms and the limited distribution of the short- winged 
form inland might open the way to a solution of the mystery. I believe 
