CHINCH BUG IN NORTH CAROLINA. 281 



J. W. Jeffreys, writing from North Carolina the same year, 

 gives the following history of their operations through the sea- 

 son. " They make their appearance in our wheat fields the last 

 of May and the first of June, and continue therein and in oat 

 fields until the grain is cut and secured, and they then march 

 with all their forces and commence their attack on our corn- 

 fields, where they continue until the cold weather commences, 

 and then take flight to the woods, though you may discover them 

 in our cornfields sheltered in the boot of the stalk in the depth 

 of winter, yet they rarely survive the winter. I have discovered 

 them in July taking flight from our wheat and oat fields, and 

 you may see thousands and millions flying to the woods, from 

 which I am under the impression that they never return, but 

 they leave a new generation behind, which are more destructive 

 than their progenitors. No person can have the faintest idea or 

 conception of the ratio of their increase, unless they study their 

 history and movements. At this time there are myriads in our 

 cornfields attached to the stalk, and they shelter under the boot 

 or shuck of the stalk, and there multiply beyond conception, 

 hundreds perhaps thousands attached to a single stalk." (Cul- 

 tivator, vol. vi, p. 201.) It would appear from this statement, 

 that in July the old insects, probably, which are about to perish, 

 take wing and fly to the forest; and that on the approach of cold 

 weather a large part of the new generation also makes the same 

 migration. It may be that there is some truth in this statement, 

 as the bugs would thus obtain a more secure shelter than they 

 can find in the open fields; but I have seen no other testimony 

 corroborating this. 



The bug had now become so numerous in Carolina and Vir- 

 ginia, that with its continued increase in 1840, the total destruc- 

 tion of their crops appeared inevitable. The prospect was so 

 alarming, that Sidney Weller, of Brinckleyville, Halifax co., 

 N. C, and others in his neighborhood, united in the spring of 

 1840, in pledging a handsome sum as a prize for some feasible 

 method to arrest the career of this depredator. But at this junc- 

 ture, Providence interfered to accomplish what no human agency 

 could haye effected. Instead of being dry like the two or three 

 preceding years, the summer of 1840 proved to be of an oppo- 



