HIBERNATION. 1 5 
injury to farm crops might be thereby increased instead of diminished. 
It seems to me that the wings of the chinch bug were in early days in 
the Mississippi Valley kept up to a high standard of development by 
the necessity of escape from prairie fires and not by the presence of 
Sporotrichium globuUfenim, as suggested by Professor Sajo in his 
paper, a translation of which is included herein under the heading. 
"Habits of the European species, Blistsus dorice Ferr." 
As mentioned further on, the advance of civilization having revolu- 
tionized the face of the country, with this change there has come a 
corresponding one in the hibernating habits of the chinch bug, which 
must now seek shelter in the limited patches of timber that are left in 
the sections that were once entirely wooded and in the matted grass 
along fences and roadsides, but especially among the fallen leaves and 
rubbish that usually accumulate along Osage orange hedges. Brush 
piles, old haycocks, strawstacks, and, in Ohio at any rate, shocks of 
corn fodder left standing in the fields through the winter, all harbor 
chinch bugs during the hibernating season. 
The fact of the insect hibernating in matted blue grass along road- 
sides and fences has been called in question by Professor Forbes and 
by Mr. Marlatt, the former in his first report as State entomologist of 
Illinois (p. 37) and the latter in Insect Life (Vol. VII, p. 232), but not- 
withstanding this, in some parts of Ohio, in Indiana and Illinois, they 
do hibernate in just such places and can be found there, especially 
during the winter and early spring following a season of abundance, 
but the investigator must know how to search for them. 1 have found 
them late in the fall collected under rails, half buried in soil and dead 
grass, and in northern Illinois while searching for other insects in 
early spring I was sure to find them in varying numbers with small 
Carabida*, Staphylinida^, and other early-appearing insects, on the 
under side of boards laid down in grassy places, though no amount of 
searching the grass itself would haye revealed their presence. 
In the timothy meadows of northeastern Ohio the percentage of long- 
winged individuals is always much greater in fall than in June, show- 
ing that some, at least, hibernate there and migrate to the cultivated 
fields in spring. In Kansas, where Mr. Marlatt made his observations, 
there was still too much prairie, and the species was doubtless still 
adhering to its ancient habits of hibernation. In southern Ohio 1 
have found them attacking the wheat in May. in small isolated spots 
over the fields, while there was nothing in the least to imply an inva- 
sion from outside, but the wheat had been sown in the fall among corn. 
and later the corn stalks cut off and shocked, remaining in this condi- 
tion until the following spring. This occurred so frequently that there 
seemed no room to doubt that the attacks had been caused by adults 
wintering over in the corn fodder, and that these left their winter 
quarters in spring to feed and breed on the grain growing nearest at 
hand. 
