286 
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 
[Vol. 13 
Athens, Indiana, Hagerstown, Maryland, and Advance, Charleston, 
Clinton, Meramec Highlands, Sulphur Springs and Webster Groves, 
Missouri. 
At West LaFayette, Indiana, a number of common cat-tails growing 
in a small seepage swamp on a hillside on the east side of South Ells¬ 
worth Street, and separated from the Wabash River by a half mile of 
cultivated bottom land, were examined on October 29, 1915. A 
number of stalks showed larval work, but only 1 good larva was secured. 
This larva, in the root crown in which it was found, was placed in a tin 
cage and kept in a warm room. By November 2, it had left its excava¬ 
tion. By November 18, it had pupated and by the 23rd, had become 
an adult male C. pertinax. Undoubtedly if this specimen had remained 
in the swamp, it would have wintered as an immature specimen, 
probably as a larva. Investigations of cat-tails in this swamp were 
continued November 27, when several excavations packed charac¬ 
teristically with frass, with occasional larval masks, were found, and 
1 dead adult C. pertinax was found in its larval excavation, above a 
wad of frass representing one end of the pupal cell. The larval exca¬ 
vation extended some inches along the horizontal root stock or rhizome. 
On July 14, 1916, the billbug situation in a field two miles northwest 
of West LaFayette, where possibly 10 acres of land had gone back to 
swamp, was made the subject of study. As the result of a neglected 
tile drain, water was constantly present in such quantity that water 
fowl bred there. Cat-tails were abundant some distance out in the 
water. The river bulrush (Scirpus fluviatilis (Torr.) Gray), was per¬ 
haps the dominant possible billbug host actually growing both in the 
water and on the shore. The land around the pond was covered with 
a dense sod, mostly of Cyperus strigosus L. The evidence of billbug 
work is frequently hardest to find where the host plant is extremely 
abundant. It so happened, however, that in this large bed of C. strig¬ 
osus , 1 female C. pertinax adult was taken, clinging head downward as 
if feeding, on a plant of C. strigosus, about 1 inch above the roots. In 
her cage, this female fed freely on the plant. 
About a mile east of Athens, Indiana, a collection of common cat¬ 
tail root crowns infested with C. pertinax was made in a mud hole along 
the north side of the Erie Railroad, when the mud was stiff enough to 
walk on. About 25 per cent of the crowns were infested, some with 
2 or more larvae to the crown. Two larvae were nearly or quite mature, 
some were quite small. From this collection, 17 C. pertinax adults, 
including 5 males and 11 females were reared, mostly in an outdoor, 
IQ-inch flower pot cage. This cage was examined October 18, at 
which time 13 adults, 7 pupae and 1 diseased larva were found, some in 
pupa cells in the soil, and no specimen and no exuviae belonging in 
pupa cells were found in any of the larval excavations in the crowns. 
