DKSTRUCTIVK INSECTS. 19 



disgusting insect, (d in subsequent pages (paragraph 52), the 

 following account of its progress and destructiveness is submitted 

 from Dr. Fitch's reports : — "The chinch bug has now multiplied 

 and extended itself over all parts of Illinois and the adjacent 

 districts of Indiana and Wisconsin, and has become a most for- 

 midable scourge. The dry seasons which have recently occurred 

 have increased it excessively. In passing through Northern 

 Illinois, in the autumn of 1854, I found it in myriads. In the 

 middle of extensive prairies, on parting the grass in search of 

 insects, the ground in some places was found covered and swarm- 

 ing with chinch bugs. The appearance reminded me of that 

 presented on parting the hair of a calf that has been poorly 

 wintered, where the skin is found literally alive with vermin. 



22. Our western neighbours have for years past been congra- 

 tulating themselves upon the security of their wheat crops, 

 exempt from the midge and other insect depredators which were 

 causing us such losses here at the east. But they now find that 

 they have in the chinch bug a foe more formidable and destruc- 

 tive even than the wheat midge, since it not only cuts off their 

 wheat, but in many localities it takes the corn a*id other crops 

 also. Although it is commonly onlv' a strip of the outer edge 

 of the field which they devastate, yet in several instances the 

 entire field is invaded and swarms with them, so that no grain is 

 developed in the heads, and some have set fire to their wheat fields 

 to consume the hosts of these vermin which were gathered therein, 

 with the hope of thereby lessening the numbers upon their 

 farms the following year. The disgusting smell, moreover, which 

 these bugs emit, is most loathsome and sickening to the labourers 

 engaged in harvesting the wheat fields. Lilley's reaping machine, 

 made at Elgin, Illinois, has small deep boxes sunk in the plat- 



(1) In 1856 the chiuch bug injured spring wheat in Fayette County, Iowa. 



