278 CHINCH BUG — ITS FIRST APPEARANCE. 



The chinch bug is a small insect of a coal-black color, with 

 snow white wing-covers, which are laid flat upon its back, and 

 show a black dot upon the middle of their outer sides. The 

 figure representing this insect its natural size (plate 4, fig. 2), 

 will give the reader a very correct idea of its appearance. It 

 belongs to the Order Hemiptera, the same order to which that dis- 

 gusting object, the bed-bug belongs, and it exhales exactly the same 

 loathsome smell which that insect does. It is by puncturing 

 the plants with its sharp, slender, needle-like beak, and sucking 

 out their juices, that this insect subsists. As it does not wound 

 the plant by gnawing it, one would suppose that it could do no 

 great injury. But their numbers are so immense that they bleed 

 the plants on which they congregate, so copiously, as not only 

 to arrest their growth, but cause them to wither and die. They 

 prefer wheat to every other kind of herbage, and when that is 

 not at hand they gather upon oats or Indian corn or grass ; but 

 they seem to be able to nourish themselves upon the juices of all 

 kinds of vegetables. They remain upon the wheat until it is 

 harvested. They then migrate to oats or corn growing adjacent 

 to the wheat field, running nimbly over the ground, appearing 

 at first glance like a swarm of black ants. Though they have 

 wings they seldom use them, and only fly the length of one or 

 two paces at a time. 



It was just at the close of our revolutionary struggle, or about 

 the year 1783, that this bug was first noticed as a depredator upon 

 wheat, in the interior of North Carolina. It was at first supposed 

 to be identical with the Hessian fly, which at this time was mak- 

 ing such destruction in wheat crops on Long Island and in New 

 Jersey. Two years before this, the British army accompanied 

 by a detachment of its German auxiliaries had marched through 

 North Carolina, and the battle of Guilford was fought. Mr. J. 

 W. Jeffreys states (Albany Cultivator, first series, vol. vi, p. 201) 

 that an aged and highly respectable citizen of Orange county, 

 N. C.j informed him that it was "immediately after this event 

 that the Hessian fly or H&sian bug destroyed their crops of 

 wheat; and they believed and do believe to this day (1839), that 

 those soldiers left the flies or bugs as they passed through the 

 country." The insects continued to increase and spread through 



