grain fed freely on both wheat and corn. In December, in 
Edwards county, they were boring holes in the sides of the bin 
as if for transformation; and adults occurred with the larvae in 
considerable abundance in May of the following year. 
One of the most remarkable features of the recent agricultural 
development of the State is the organization of extensive drainage 
operations and the opening up to cultivation of great tracts of 
swamp land. As the original vegetation of these lands is peculiar, 
the first crops raised there are exposed to peculiar insect attack 
by species native to the swamp grasses, and I have watched with 
interest not unmixed with apprehension the entomological conse¬ 
quences of this improvement. A marked instance of possible mis¬ 
chief of this kind presented itself in the summer of 1888, in the 
form of an attack on corn and millet in one of these drainage 
districts, by a snout beetle ( Sphenophorus ochreus) whose breed¬ 
ing habits and history were at the time unknown. A full account 
of the observations and experiments made in the investigation of 
this species is given in a separate article; and with this I have 
incorporated considerable new information concerning other injuri¬ 
ous species of this genus. 
Abundant among the chinch bugs (whose continued devastations 
in Southern Illinois have called for very full treatment in this 
report) was a species occasionally noticed by economic entomolo¬ 
gists known by them as the flea negro bug ( Thyreocoris puli - 
cctrius). Its extraordinary abundance in wheat fields at harvest 
time in 1887 and 1888 had no visible connection with any injury 
to grain, and experiments reported in another article show that it 
fed rather upon certain abundant weeds. 
Injuries done by the corn root louse ( Aphis maidis f Fitch) 
were apparently neither more nor less abundant than in recent 
years. Notable progress was made in the determination of obscure 
points in the life history of this species, some of. them open¬ 
ing the way to experimental work for its extermination. The 
supposed aerial form of this louse, which appears in mid¬ 
summer upon the leaves of the corn, has been unusually ^ rare 
during the last two years—possibly because of the hot and dry 
weather, so intense in 1887 as to whiten and kill, by a sort of sun¬ 
stroke, innumerable leaves of corn in thrifty fields. 
The common grasshoppers, so abundant in 1885 and 1886, were 
rarely heard from in the period covered by this report, a few com¬ 
plaints from Southern Illinois—especially in 1888, from the extreme 
southeastern part of the State—being all the reports of noticeable 
damage which reached this office. At Centralist a five-year-old 
orchard was badly hurt by them in 1888, and at Shattuc, meadows 
were damaged in 1887. The species involved were Pezotettix fe- 
mur-rubrum and P. differenticdis —the same as those most abun¬ 
dant in Northern Illinois three years before. 
