13 
at lights in early spring. Hibernating as an adult, it leaves its 
winter quarters with the first warm sunny days, and flies abroad 
at night in counties^ myriads. Shortly afterwards the eggs are 
laid in the earth, and a new generation comes forth abundantly 
in June and July. The adults themselves may be found, how¬ 
ever, throughout the year. It is possible that more than one 
generation occurs in a season. We have noticed, in fact, a dis¬ 
agreeable abundance of these beetles at lights on warm Septem¬ 
ber evenings. The species ranges throughout all, or the greater 
part, of the United States and Canada. 
It was first made known to me as injurious to seed corn in 
the ground by a note from Mr. Thomas Huber, of Illinois City, 
Rock Island county, dated June 4, 1883, and accompanied by 
a specimen of the beetle “found in seed corn, buried in the 
kernel, eating the germ and part of the inside.” In Bulletin No. 
12 of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Division of Entomol¬ 
ogy (p. 44), Professor Riley reports the receipt of this beetle 
during the summer of 1885, with the information that it was 
injuring young corn by gnawing into the seed and by eating the 
sprouting roots. One of these observations was confirmed by 
the sending of a specimen together with an injured grain. The 
exact amount of damage was not stated, but it was said to be 
quite extensive. Even before these observations I had myself 
detected this beetle injuring the roots of corn to some small ex¬ 
tent;* a point determined by the dissection of specimens taken 
in corn fields, among the roots. Nearly half the food of these 
dissected specimens, however, consisted of fragments of chinch 
bugs, and other insect remains, The character and amount of 
this injury to corn have not heretofore been such as to call for 
protective treatment, but if the beetle should become sufficiently 
destructive to make such measures profitable, it is likely that 
“a satisfactory remedy will be found in soaking all seed corn for 
a short time before planting in some arsenical solution, such as 
Paris green or London purple, in water. Such a course will not 
injure the germinative quality of the seed, and will probably re¬ 
sult in the death of all beetles which attempt to gnaw the seed.”t 
This species was described by Eabricius in 17921, but its eco¬ 
nomic record did not begin till 1882, when, in treating of the 
food relations of predaceous beetles in my “Twelfth Report of 
the State Entomologist” (p. Ill), I discussed its food under the 
name of Agonoderus comma. In May, 1883, I also treated the 
food of the species in an article on the “Food Relations of the 
Carabidae and Coccinellidse”§. Professor Riley, in Bulletin 12 of 
the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Division of Entomology 
(1886, p. 44), records an injury to seed corn by this beetle, 
* Twelfth Report State Entomologist of Illinois, p. 43. 
t Bulletin. No. 12, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Division of Entomology, p. 45. 
t Ent. Syst. I., p. 159. 
S Bull. Ill. State Lab. Nat. Hist., Vol. I, No. 6 (1883), pp. 43, 50. 
