212 Bugs, Cicadas, Aphids, and Scale-insects 



over the United States and in Canada, but the great losses occasioned by 

 it occur mostly in the corn-growing states of the Mississippi Valley, where 

 it has been known as a pest since 1823. I have seen great corn-fields in 

 this valley ruined in less than a week, the little black and white bugs mass- 

 ing in such numbers on the growing corn that the stalk and bases of the 

 leaves were wholly concealed by the covering of bugs. The chinch-bug 

 when adult is about inch long, blackish with the fore wings semi-trans- 

 parent white and with a conspicuous small trian- 

 gular black dot near the middle of the outer margin. 

 The very young are red, but become blackish or gray 

 as they grow older. The bug is injurious in all 

 stages, young, half grown, and adult. The life- 

 history, in Kansas, is as follows: The eggs are laid 

 in the spring (from middle of March to middle of 

 May) by bugs which have hibernated in the adult 

 stage. They are laid a few at a time, perhaps five 

 hundred in all by each female. The young "red- 

 bugs" begin work in the wheat-fields, and usually 

 FIG. 293. The chinch- remain in the wheat until harvest (last of June to 

 bug, Blissus leueopterus. middle of July) , when the destructive host moves into 

 (Nine times natural ^ ^^ Qf yQung and growing com j t requires 



about six weeks for the maturing of the bugs. 



The adults now pair and the cycle of a new generation begins. The 

 perfect insects of this generation are those which pass through the winter 

 and lay the eggs the following spring for the next year's first brood. It 

 is highly probable if not certain that a third brood often appears in Kansas. 

 The chinch-bug, though winged, uses its powers of flight but little, and its 

 migrations from wheat- to corn-fields in July are usually on foot. The wings 

 are used to some degree at pairing-time. 



The remedies for chinch-bug attacks include the gathering together in 

 winter of all rubbish, old corn-leaves, dead leaves, etc., in which the old bugs 

 hibernate, and burning it, which will destroy many parent bugs, thereby largely 

 lessening the spring brood. Disputing the entrance of the bugs into the 

 field, when migrating on foot, by plowing furrows around the field and 

 pouring coal-tar or crude petroleum into these moats, is often effective. 

 There are several natural remedies, namely, the attacks of predaceous insects, 

 as aphis-lions, ladybird-beetles, and others, and the attacks of some birds, 

 as the common quail. Most effective of all, however, is the rapid spread 

 in a crowded field of a parasitic fungus, Sporotrichum globuliferum, which 

 kills the bugs by the wholesale. This fungus cannot grow rapidly except 

 in moist warm weather, and the bugs thrive especially in dry weather. So 

 the rapid spreading and effective killing by this disease depends on favorable 



