115 
midrib. Even the bark of the younger twigs may be gnawed 
away. Two species, hirticula and lusca, have been charged with 
an almost wanton injury to the foliage of trees (oak and chest¬ 
nut) done by gnawing through the leaf petioles without eating 
the leaves (Proc. Ent. Soc., Washington, Vol. II., p. 59), and 
we have noted the same habit as occasionally exhibited to some 
small extent in the “artificial forest” on the University premises 
at Champaign. The imagos sometimes eat the leaves of blue- 
grass also, and we have once found them feeding on heads of 
clover and once on corn. Several species have been known to 
eat the leaves of raspberries (“Insect Life,” Yol. I., p. 366). 
Concerning the food of the separate species, we have only notes 
on the preferences of L. in versa, L. hirticula , and Z. fnsca. In 
our breeding cages we learned that adults of L. inversa would 
feed upon the blades of blue-grass, at least when nothing else 
was available, and that, supplied with leaves from a variety of 
trees, they ate freely of oak, elm, and chestnut, and slightly of 
hazel, but neglected ash. L. hirticula also ate blue-grass in our 
breeding cages under similar circumstances, and devoured chest¬ 
nut very freely, but at first did not touch ash or oak. Later it ate 
elm, oak, and chestnut greedily, hazel and hickory sparingly, and 
birch not at all. Oak and chestnut leaves seem, on the whole, 
to be the favorite food of this species. L. fusca, similarly fed, 
also ate oak and chestnut greedily, and ash and elm less freely. 
A single species (L. rubiginosa) has been reported to eat “New 
Jersey tea” ( Ceauothus americanus) in Kansas.* 
These notes on the food of the beetles are of interest because 
of the damage sometimes done, by these insects, especially to 
trees on lawns, during the brief period of their excessive abund¬ 
ance in May and June, but still more because it is in the adult 
stage that the white grubs are most susceptible to organized 
attack. If they are ever thoroughly mastered by the farmers 
of America, it will apparently be by concerted measures, possi¬ 
bly supplemented by legal requirement, for the destruction of 
June beetles before they have laid their eggs. 
The food of the larva of Cyclocephala does not differ from 
that of the common species of Lachnosterna so far as our ob¬ 
servations go, the Cyclocephala grub having been taken by us 
from grass and from corn. The food of the imago of C. im- 
macufata is not known to me. Specimens of this insect enclosed 
June 23 in a breeding cage with branches of basswood, ash, 
birch, oak, elm, hard maple, and soft maple, began to die on 
the 25th, and had all died by July 2 without eating anything. 
LIFE HISTORY AND HABITS. 
Lachnosterna. Imago (Plate XIL, Fig. 1, 4, and 6). r Ihe 
adult beetles of the genus Lachnosterna, hibernating in the 
earth in the cells where they originated, emerge in spring and 
* Proe. Ent. Soc. of Washington, Vol. II., p. 244. 
