L A C H N OST I- K N A CRIBR08A . 
1 
If near the old hole, a beetle will use it again; otherwise a new on** is 
quickly made, and in a few minutes the beetle will have disappeared. 
The beetles were usually found about 3 inches deep in the soil, but 
Mr. Burton stated that he had found them in burrows running hori- 
zontally to a vertical burrow some -4 or 5 inches deep. A hundred 
of the beetles were picked up around the edge of a cotton field in a few 
minutes. Some of them emerged from ground which had been covered 
with water, but seemed none the worse for it. They are exceedingly 
awkward, and when disturbed feign death, remaining- in any conceiv- 
able position for several minute.-. For the past two years they had 
destroyed peanuts and had injured strawberries, grape cutting-, and 
cowpeas in this locality. Young cotton was attacked in preference to 
anything but ragweed, which is the favorite food plant. When 
observed they were feeding on the ragweed along the fences around 
cotton. This is the usual place for them to appear. Subsequently 
they spread into the cotton, doing injury 
along the edges. One beetle is said to de- 
stroy a cotton plant 6 or 8 inches high 
during its evening meal. A number of 
beetles were observed to emerge in young 
corn. They did not feed, however, and 
many of those found were dead. They 
were not found in meadow land. During 
the previous year cotton had been planted 
on land where grain had been grown the 
year before. After the grain was cut the 
land had been left for the remainder of 
the season to grow up to weeds, and it was 
not plowed until late the next spring, just 
before planting cotton. In this field the extent of injury to cotton 
was unprecedented. The cotton planted in 1904 was on land which 
had been well plowed and kept free from weeds during the previous 
fall and winter, and in this case the injury was not serious. The 
beetles do not seem to be injurious on land following corn. It seems 
probable that the females oviposit in cotton land and that if this 
i- well cultivated and winter plowed the larva 1 are killed. Larva 1 
feeding on the roots of weeds along the fences where plowing is 
impossible will, of course, survive this treatment, hut the number of 
adults emerging in the spring will be comparatively very -mall. 
On July 14, 1904, injury by this insect was observed along one end 
of a small piece of cotton at Wichita Falls, the land having been in 
wheat during the previous season. At this time the beetles had prac- 
tically all disappeared, although they were present in great numbers a 
few days previously. 
15109— No. -V— OH 8 
Fig. 6. — Lachnosterna cribroea: fe- 
male—enlarged I author's illustra- 
tion i. 
