94 
By July most of the old, hibernating brood are dead, and the 
new generation is nearly full grown; far enough advanced by har¬ 
vest to abandon the fields of wheat and barley for the nearest 
available food—oats or corn, if these are adjacent, otherwise, and 
more rarely, grass. Making their way in on foot they will at first 
attack only the borders of these fields; but later—by the first of 
August at the farthest —the bugs not already located will begin to 
fly, and so will become generally disseminated through fields of 
corn. Not infrequently, especially to the southward, many of the 
old bugs fly as soon as they get the use of their wings; but a& 
only a small part of them have passed their final moult before 
small grain ripens, most of the generation must still search for 
food on foot. In the corn the eggs are laid behind the sheaths of 
the lower leaves, and under the protection of this retreat the 
young hatch and mature, only coming out upon the exposed sur¬ 
faces of the leaves when they become superabundant or when they 
get their growth. The full grown bugs fly freely, singly, but not 
in swarms, whenever their food fails them where they are. Rarely 
we find in the southern part of the State some trace of a third 
generation in a season, the young of these appearing in Septem¬ 
ber in the corn—but these are in too small numbers to have any 
practical importance. The generations are thus mainly two; one 
breeding chiefly in wheat and barley, and the other almost wholly 
in corn—the adults of this latter brood passing the winter as 
above described. 
Each female is believed to be capable of laying about five hun¬ 
dred eggs. 
FOOD PLANTS. 
The chinch bug is practically confined for food to the great family 
of grasses (Graminese), which contains all the cereals and grasses, 
tame and wild. Some of these, however, it feeds upon with re¬ 
luctance, if at all; and among the ordinary objects of its food it 
has its very decided preferences. Among the crop plants, wheat, 
barley and rye, sorghum, broom corn and. Indian corn, millet and 
Hungarian grass are its favorite foods, with oats and timothy 
clearly second to these; while among the wild grasses, its prefer¬ 
ence is for fox-tail grass and “tickle grass” (Setaria and Eragrostis). 
It seems to prefer timothy to blue grass, not really relishing 
either as a general thing*—and takes to the crab grasses (Panicum) 
not at all, or only as a last resort. It is reported by old settlers 
to feed on the wild prairie grasses, and to have bred upon them 
freely when the country was new; but it is not known what species 
of these grasses it affects. Nothing seems more precisely to its 
liking than the Setarias (fox-tail, Hungarian, and millet), unless 
it be sorghum and broom corn. 
*It should be noted, however, that the chinch bug may breed abundantly, with destructivej 
consequences, in timothy meadows and pastures, although in the West this seems not to ha\e 
been a common occurrence. A limited but severe attack in New York in lbbx, was almost 
wholly confined to these situations. 
