44 
grain lands in this section are infested by the Hessian Fly. A section 
of country in Sonoma County, located between Petaluma and Santa 
Bosa, is also infested. I have not examined other sections reported. 
About six years ago it appeared in a held of grain (wheat) near Vallejo, 
and has spread since that time. Mr. Brownlee, of Creston, about 10 
miles from where it first started, lost 380 acres of wheat in 1883.” 
Specimens which Mr. Cooke sent with his letter proved the correct- 
ness of his determination. If the insect has really, as he states, been a 
denizen of California for six years, it seems strange that the fact should 
never before have been authoritatively placed on record. We have 
been on the lookout for such a fact ever since the publication of Dr. 
Packard’s first map of the distribution of the species,* and when Mr. 
Cooke in his work on injurious insects, in 1883t, stated that he had no 
knowledge of its existence in California, we accepted his evidence as 
practically conclusive. 
We shall now watch its further spread in the State with interest, 
more particularly to see whether the energetic Californians will fight 
this pest any more successfully thau the Eastern farmers have done. 
It is worthy of note also that the False Chinch Bug ( N~ysius destructor ) 
has done great damage in vineyards in California during the summer, 
and that it was also reported as injuring rye and wheat. 
“Wheel Bugs ” destroying Hive Bees. — In October we received 
from Mr. C. M. Gibbens, of Winchester, Va., a live specimen of the 
Wheel Bug ( Prionotus cristatus ), with the information that it was found 
in abundance upon his grounds and preyed upon his honey bees, lurk- 
ing about their hives. Although the Wheel Bug is, so far as we know, 
exclusively a predaceous insect, this particular habit has not, we think, 
before been observed. 
Agonoderus pallipes injurious to Corn (Plate I, fig. 2). — This 
common ground beetle was, until quite recently, supposed to be strictly 
carnivorous. In 1882, Professor Forbes, in the Twelfth Eeport of the 
State Entomologist of Illinois, page 27, recorded that he found this 
species (referring to it as A. comma) under the clods aud in the ground 
about the roots of corn in a field, which was injured by the Corn-root 
Worm ( Diabrotica longicornis ), and on examination of the stomach con- 
tents they were found to have partaken both of animal and vegetable 
food. In the same report (p. 43) he states that he found them in a field 
of corn infested by the Chinch Bug, and examination showed that they 
had fed in part on Chinch Bugs and other insects, but also on vegeta- 
tion, which appeared to have been roots of corn. On page 111 ( loc . cit.) 
he states that a dissection of the stomachs of fifteen specimens of this 
* Report upon the Rocky Mountain locust aud other iusects, &c. Ninth Ann. Rept. 
U. S. Geol. and Geogr. Surv. Terr., Washington, 1877. 
t “ Injurious insects of the orchard, vineyard,” &c. By Matthew Cooke, Sacramento, 
1883. 
