304 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



bug. There can be no doubt that if all or the great bulk of agriculturists 

 will see to it that proper means are taken each year to hold the chinch 

 bug in check and reduce its numbers, that in a few years the chinch bug 

 will cause no more loss than is caused by a great many other injurious in- 

 sects. The great difficulty, however, is to educate the mass of agricul- 

 tural people up to the point of living up to such rules. The farmers are 

 busy during the summer, and, as a rule, do not feel like taking any time 

 to the fighting of insects. They feel hke relying more upon some remedy 

 that can be easily applied, with a hope that it will suft'ice ; and in the 

 great bulk of cases, they will not take the pains to do this in as thorough 

 a manner as they should. 



In the first place, every agriculturist should take advantage of the 

 fact that chinch bugs hibernate in the adult condition during winter 

 under rubbish of various kinds, as before described. If the farm is kept 

 thoroughly clean, and no rubbish of any description or no hedge fences 

 or other places where the insects can readily hibernate are allowed, then 

 there will be little chance of the chinch bug hibernating on the farm. In 

 other words, clean farming will do a great deal towards lessening the 

 number of chinch bugs. If the rubbish of various kinds is gathered from 

 the fields and from about the corners of fences, and placed in piles or in 

 rows early in the fall, and allowed to remain there until the chinch bugs 

 have collected under these for their winter quarters, and these are then 

 burned, vast numbers of the chinch bugs will be destroyed with them. 

 There are a great many hedge fences in this country that contain dead 

 grass and weeds, and rubbish of various kinds, that could well be set on 

 fire late in the fall, and thereby destroy the hibernating bugs. If dead 

 leaves and the like, especially those along the side of forests and other 

 w^ind breaks in the neighborhood of cultivated fields that are infested, are 

 burned over late in the fall, great numbers of hibernating bugs will be 

 killed. 



Then, again, if the farmers will sow millet at the proper time, so that 

 the millet will be up early in the spring, it will attract the migrating 

 chinch bugs that are coming out from their winter quarters, and they will 

 collect upon the millet in great numbers, and can readily be destroyed 

 by spraying with kerosene, or by scattering straw over the millet and 

 setting fire to it. This millet trap can profitably be used along the border 

 of those places where the chinch bugs hibernate, or along the line separ- 

 ating an agriculturist's farm from his neighbors. 



The practice, which is so common in Missouri, of stacking the corn 

 in shocks in the field, and then cultivating and sowing wheat there, is 

 a very bad one for the chinch bug proposition, because the chinch bugs 



