68 
boxes. A letter from Mr. F. S. Earle, received about the same 
time, gave similar information respecting the plants in the field, in 
the following terms: 
“I examined to-day [October 25] fifteen or twenty strawberry 
plants that had been infested by the crown-borer. I found them all 
deserted, the insects having escaped by a small hole in the side of 
the crown of the plant, usually not far below the surface of the 
ground. This coincides with my former observations, and seems to 
show that the borer does not winter in the crowns. More than half 
of the plants examined were still alive, but they were feeble, and 
lacked vigor.” 
Early in November I visited the same fields myself, and made a 
protracted search, in every way I could devise, for eggs, beetles 
and larvae, both in and about the plants, under rubbish, and on the 
ground. The borers had all left the plants, not one being found in 
any stage in the hundreds of crowns examined. Among the insects 
collected at Villa Ridge, a single crown-borer beetle was found, ap¬ 
parently obtained by sweeping, and at any rate occurring on the 
surface, outside the plant. I sent from here to the laboratory, at 
Normal, a lot of the plants, to be searched for eggs. On those sent 
from Centralia, my assistant failed to find any eggs whatever, but 
as the roots were washed to free them from dirt before examining 
them, it is possible that the eggs were lost in this way. The plants 
from Villa Ridge were sent to Mr. Garman, with instructions to set 
part of them out for observation, and to examine a part for eggs. 
In searching thirty plants he found ten eggs, all exactly alike, and 
all placed between the bases of the leaves, where the eggs of the 
crown-borer would be expected to occur. Five of these eggs were on 
young plants, and five on old. They were large for the eggs of this I 
beetle, and probably belonged to some other insect. 
On the other hand, out of a package of plants sent by Mr. Brun- 
ton late in December, taken from his worst field, about fifty speci¬ 
mens were very closely searched, without discovering any of these 
eggs. _ \l 
In compliance with my request, Mr. Brunton very kindly took the 
trouble to send me by freight, November 29, two grain sacks of 
earth from his field, one taken from the border of the enclosure 
under a hedge, where great numbers of insects were hibernating, 
and the other containing plants and dirt together, as dug up from 
the middle of the field. 
These were carefully worked down through a set of wire sieves of 
various degrees of coarseness, from one-half inch to one-twentieth 
inch mesh, used in assorting the contents of the dredge in aquatic 
collecting. The earth and plants were placed on the upper seives, 
and the dirt washed through and away with a hose, leaving the 
other material assorted according to size. This was then dried and 
carefully looked over, bit by bit, so that not even the smallest insect 
escaped us. By this method, we were absolutely sure of securing all 
the beetles concealed in the earth. As a result of this search, so 
conducted, four active crown-borer beetles were found. We thus 
have proof positive that the beetle hibernates in the field, at least 
in part. 
