54 
The Food Relations of the Carabidce and Cocciuellidce. 
and lichen spores to four per cent. The Jacksonville specimen 
had eaten only fungi. 
Genus Cycloneda. 
In the corn-field with the chinch-bugs, three specimens of C. 
sanguined were collected, which had eaten plant-lice, pollen of 
Composite, lichen spores and spores of fungi. The first made 
about one-tliird of their food, the pollen grains were estimated at 
nearly half, and lichen spores at three per cent. The eighteen 
per cent, of fungi were of the usual character. 
The Family as a Unit. 
A summary and comparison of the food of these two groups, 
taken singly without reference to their genera, develops some in- 
teresting and unexpected facts. Although the corn-field in which 
the second collection was made was teeming with insects of the 
kinds especially tempting to the Coccinellidm, and although these 
beetles themselves were there in truly surprising numbers, it is 
not easy to believe, considering the tables upon which this dis- 
cussion is based, that the Cocci nellidm were attracted to the field 
by the abundance of insects available for their food. The beetles 
of the first group are seen to have eaten nearly twice as many 
insects as those from the field of corn, while the fungi eaten were 
as thirty-six to fifty-six respectively. Only eighteen specimens 
were dissected, out of the large number collected in the corn-field, 
but the contents of their stomachs were of so uniform a character 
that there was every reason to suppose that they illustrated cor- 
rectly the food of the family at that time and place. It would 
therefore seem possible that these beetles were attracted rather 
by the stores of fungi in the field, than by the chinch-bugs and 
Aphides. The condition of the leaves and stalks of the corn, 
drained and deadened by insect depredations, was such as to 
afford an excellent nidus for the development of those fungi 
which spring up every where spontaneously upon dead and decay- 
ing vegetation, and these Avere in fact extremely abundant. An 
alternative explanation is perhaps more probable. The condition 
of the field gave abundant evidence that the plant-lice had been 
very much more numerous some time before; and it is possible 
that, as a consequence of this decrease of food, and the increase of 
