TWENTY- SECOND ANNUAL MEETING. 35 



bugs for examination and experiment. He did so, and the disease proved to be one 

 of the three to which your attention was called in my paper at the last annual meet- 

 ing of this Board. I have termed this disease the "White Fungus disease," the 

 scientific names of the little plant which produces it being Entomophthora and Em- 

 pusa. This disease has for several years been known to attack the chinch-bugs, and 

 is probably identical with the malady which first attracted the attention of Dr. Shimer 

 in Illinois as long ago as 1866. In favorable seasons this disease often spreads in 

 a natural way from field to field and county to county, over a considerable extent 

 of territory, sometimes including an entire State, and even two or three adjacent 

 States. But up to the summer of 1889 no successful method had been devised for 

 the artificial communication of the disease from an infected district to an unin- 

 fected district. Professor Forbes had conducted culture experiments with this 

 fungus without success, with the intention of distributing the germs of the disease, 

 apart from the bugs themselves. This method has great promise of success in the 

 future, but success has not yet been realized. 



On receipt of the sick and dead chinch-bugs from Dr. Curtiss, I at once impris- 

 oned a large number of healthy Douglas county bugs with the infected material, and 

 in a few days the disease was communicated to the fresh subjects, and it was clearly 

 established that the disease could be successfully propagated in the laboratory. 

 During the whole course of my experiments I have found that apparently the dis- 

 ease is more readily communicated from the still living sick bugs than from the 

 dead ones. Just at this time an unexpected opportunity was presented for testing 

 this question by an experiment conducted upon a larger scale than had previously 

 been possible. This opportunity was afforded through the enterprise of a reporter 

 for the Lawrence Daily Tribune, who appeared on the scene at the right moment, 

 and published a brief account of the appearance of a contagious disease among the 

 chinch-bugs of Douglas county, and stated positively that the disease could be 

 started in any field and the field soon cleared of bugs by scattering a few dead bugs, 

 which could be obtained by sending an application to the writer of this article. In 

 a few days I began to receive a large number of letters from no less than nine dif- 

 ferent States, begging for "diseased and deceased bugs." The magnificent oppor- 

 tunity thus afforded by the rather too "previous" reporter was not allowed to go 

 unimproved, and during July and August sick and dead bugs were sent to farmers 

 and Agricultural Experiment Stations in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Minne- 

 sota, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky. The following letter of instructions 

 accompanied each package of bugs: 



Dear Sir: Having just obtained a limited supply of diseased chinch-bugs, I inclose a small box of 

 them for your use, on condition of your making a careful trial of them and reporting to me the result. 



Please observe the following directions: Mix these bugs with ten or twenty times as many healthy 

 bugs, and keep them together for 36 or 48 hours. Then turn them loose (both dead and living ones) 

 on the field selected for the experiment. Watch closely for the result. A similar lot sent to Ottawa 

 county, Kansas, two weeks ago and distributed according to the above directions, soon communicated 

 the disease to that region. The bugs began to die in five days after the infected material had been 

 "planted." 



Please make a careful record of your proceedings, and report to me, as I am very anxious to discover 

 the best possible method of spreading this disease among our farmers' most destructive enemies. 



Yours truly, F. II. Snow. 



The results of this wholesale experiment have been exceedingly satisfactory, and 

 are best presented by the following selections from an extensive correspondence: 



H. J. Waters, assistant agriculturist of the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Sta- 

 tion at Columbia, wrote July 10th: "On the station grounds here the chinch-bugs 

 are very numerous, and are increasing with alarming rapidity. I have kept close 

 watch for the natural appearance of the disease, but so far no bugs have shown any 



