CHINCH BUG — REMEDIES. 295 



stance of the species being mostly found upon flowers, Jinthocoris 

 or flower-bug. 



The False chinch bug, Anthocoris pseudo-chinche , is but 0.08 in length, and is 

 black, smooth and shining, with its antennae, feet and four anterior shanks and 

 knees pale dull yellow. Its wing covers are white, tinged anteriorly with yellowish 

 with a large triangular black spot across their middle, occupying the whole poste- 

 rior part of the thick coriaceous portion, this spot being brownish on its anterior 

 "edge. The thorax has an impressed line or groove across its middle. The thin 

 membranous part of the wing covers is somewhat transparent and clear, but a va- 

 riety (which may be named semiclarus) occurs, in which its posterior half is per- 

 ceptibly tinged with smoky. This species is closely related to the European species 

 minutus Linn., and nigrella Zetterstedt, but is readily distinguished by the colors 

 of its legs, not to mention other characters. Identical as so many of our American 

 species of this order certainly are with those of Europe, it is possible that this 

 ■species has been described by some author whose work I have not seen. Another 

 small species resembling this in many points, the Xylocoris domcslicus Hahn, ap- 

 pears to be as common upon this side of the Atlantic as it is in Europe, as is also 

 the variety of this species, named dimidiata by Spinola and Parisiensis by Amyot 

 and Serville. 



This insect, so far as we yet know, is exempt from any molesta- 

 tion by predaceous insects and other animals. No bird probably 

 lias a relish for such an unsavory morsel as one of these fetid 

 chinch bugs. And this is undoubtedly one of the chief reasons 

 why no check is given to its multiplication, and when one or two 

 favorable seasons arrive, it is able to increase with a rapidity 

 ■and to an extent which has few parallels among the insect races. 



Nor has any mode for destroying this insect or preventing its 

 depredations, been discovered, of such efficacy as to bring it into 

 public notice and favor. When they are migrating from one field 

 into another, it is reported that they have been arrested by dig- 

 ging a trench before them, up the crumbling dirt of the sides of 

 which, they are unable to climb; and when the whole colony is 

 thus imprisoned, they have been covered with straw and burned. 

 By burning the dry leaves of the forest in places where they have 

 settled in numbers, multitudes have been destroyed. A subscri- 

 ber to the Southern Planter (vol. xv, p. 275), says he knows that 

 strong soap suds will kill them, when on corn, if a half gill or 

 gill be poured upon each stalk — a labor not half so great as a 

 single hoeing of the crop is. When this insect became so numer- 

 ous in North Carolina, in 1839, Mr. J. W. Jeffreys proposed 

 that the farmers and planters should all abandon the sowing of 

 wheat for two or three years, he deeming this the only measure 



