4 
47 
ment, extends along the dorsum. Body sparsely clothed with 
long yellowish brown hairs; a row of from 18 to 22 hairs ex¬ 
tends around the body from one subdorsal line to the other 
near the caudal border of each segment except the head and 
last segment; two similar hairs arise near the cephalic margin 
of the segments, one dorsad and the other ventrad of each 
spiracle; the lateral and caudal tubercles on the anal segment 
have one or two hairs arising from their sides, and other hairs 
arise from the proleg and from small tubercles on the venter of 
the segment.”— Comstock & Slingerland. 
Imago. (Plate VII., Fig. 2.)—'“Piceous black, shining, surface 
often with seneous tinge, elytra often pale, legs pale rufous; 
surface sparsely clothed with grayish pubescence. Thorax mod¬ 
erately, not densely, punctured, hind angles divergent, carinate, 
the carina diverging from the margin; flanks moderately densely 
punctured in front, a large smooth space posteriorly. Elytra 
moderately deeply striate, striae punctured, intervals convex 
and punctulate. * The prosternal mucro is horizontal, the 
mesosternum is however not prominent. Length 9-15 mm. 
Geo. H. Horn. (Trans. Am. Ent. Soc. VIII., p. 73.) 
The female differs from the male in having the thorax shorter, 
its disk more convex and punctured, the sides more arcuate, 
and the general form stouter and more convex. 
NATURAL ENEMIES OF WIREWORMS. 
A single parasitic fly has been bred by us from a wireworm, 
which, because of its condition when found, could be only doubt¬ 
fully referred to Melanotus fissilis. Comstock and Slingerland 
frequently found larvae killed in their breeding cages by a fungus 
determined by Professor Boland Thaxter as probably Metarrhi- 
zius anisoplite. Larvae killed bj r this disease have the body 
filled by the growth of the fungus, and assume a woody appear¬ 
ance. An Asaphes larva turned out by the plow at Champaign 
May 10, 1886, was infested by a parasitic fungus of another 
genus, very much like Cordiceps. 
In my work on the food of birds,* I found that some seven¬ 
teen species eat to some extent “click beetles,” or their larvae, 
the wireworms. These insects constitute about two per cent, of 
the food of five species of the thrush family—the robin and 
the brown, the hermit, the wood, and the Alice, thrushes. The 
examination of the food of these birds continued throughout 
the year, and the proportionate amount of these beetles 
eaten was found to be greatest during the months when they 
were most numerous; but even then the quantity destroyed 
was scarcely sufficient to affect materially their average num¬ 
bers. Mr. E. V. Wilcoxf, while studying the food of the robin, 
at the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, found in the 
♦ Ball. Ill. State Lab. Nat. Hist., Vols. I and II. 
I Bull. Ohio Agr. Exper. Station, No. 43, (1892), p. 127. 
