71 
“Enclosed is a bug, found on corn plant below surface of ground.. 
Eats into plant when leaf appears above ground. Leaf crossed by 
parallel rows of holes. Find beetles on every plant on an acre or 
two of corn planted on fall plowing where oats grew last year. 
Looks as if they were about to destroy the corn entirely. Ground 
dry, sandy, and tiled every 100 feet.” 
In a subsequent letter Mr. Carter informed me that some five 
to ten acres of his corn was being destroyed by these beetles. 
S. cariosus, reported by Glover as injurious in New Jersey, was 
received by me, June 4, 1888, from South Carolina, through Mr. 
B. F. Johnson, of Champaign, with the information that it was 
very destructive to corn in that State. Every one of about fifty 
specimens collected from the field by Mr. Johnson s coi respondent, 
was of this species. 
NATURAL ENEMIES. 
No insect parasites or evidences of contagious disease have ap¬ 
peared in our studies of these insects,* and, so far. as we now 
know, birds are their only natural enemies. Turkeys and chickens 
are reported by Glover and others to feed upon them, and I have 
found them also in May and June in the stomachs of four species 
of birds,—the catbird, the brown thrush, the field sparrow, and 
the black-throated bunting.f The numbers taken by these species 
must be insignificant, however, except possibly the last, which is 
a very common bird of our meadows and pastures, and may afford 
some appreciable protection to the cultivated grasses. 
REMEDIES. 
This section must, unfortunately, be disproportionately brief, as 
there is little in the habits and histories of these “bill bugs as at 
present understood to encourage a hope of destroying them. 
The failure of ochreus to breed in corn when afforded every 
opportunity to do so, makes it likely that this large species will 
prove only an occasional and temporary annoyance, disappearing 
as fast as its native haunts are drained and cultivated. Its ascer¬ 
tained injuries can at any rate be evaded by raising flax as the 
first crop on swamp sod,—already a practice with some farmers 
in our large drainage districts. 
Robusius, which is known to breed in corn and to winter, at 
least as a usual thing, as an adult in its pupal cell within the 
roots and stalk, may be destroyed by plowing up and burning the 
stubble; but the same measure would not necessarily apply to the 
two species parvulus and sculptilis , now permanently injurious to 
corn in Illinois. Parvulus is mainly a grass beetle, and probably 
* The beak and head of a single hibernating specimen collected by Mr. Weed were covered with 
mites. 
t See Bull. Ill. St. Lab. Nat. Hist., Vol. I., No. 3, p. 120; No. 6, pp. 12, 28, 29, 32. 
