REMEDIAL MEASURES AND CONCLUSIONS. 45 
Conclusions from all the experiments may be summed up as 
follows: 
1. The chinch-bug fungus is present naturally in fields everywhere 
throughout the infested aréa in Kansas. 
2. It is present in such great abundance that any artificial distribu- 
tion of infection in a field would be too insignificant, by comparison, 
to be of practical use. 
3. Its distribution naturally through a field is much more uniform 
than any artificial distribution can be made. 
4. The amount of fungus used experimentally in both wheat and 
corn fields was so far in excess of any that would be used by the 
farmer in infecting his own fields that he could not reasonably expect 
to succeed. 
5. The fungus shows little tendency to spread from centers of 
artificial infection. The apparent rapid spread of the fungus is due 
to favorable conditions bringing it into activity simultaneously over 
considerable stretches of territory. 
6. In fields where the natural presence of the fungus is plainly 
evident its effect on the bugs can not be accelerated to any appreciable 
degree by the artificial introduction of spores, 
7. In fields where the fungus is not in evidence spores introduced 
artificially have no measurable effect, 
8. Apparent absence of fungus among chinch bugs in a field is 
evidence of unfavorable conditions rather than lack of the fungus 
spores. 
9. All the benefits of the Sporotrichum disease of chinch bugs may 
be realized by merely letting the fungus naturally present in the soil 
do the work of extermination as far as it will. 
10. Moisture conditions have much to do with the appearance of 
chinch-bug disease in a field; artificial infection nothing. 
11. Spent adult chinch bugs succumb to attack more readily than 
younger ones, but as the old bugs have finished depositing their eggs, 
their loss by fungus disease accomplishes little else than increasing 
the amount of the infectious material. 
12. Laboratory experiments can be made to prove that artificial 
infection accomplishes results upon bugs confined in cramped quar- 
ters and without food, but in the field, where fresh and usually drier 
air prevails and food is abundant, an entirely different situation is 
presented, 
13. Advocating artificial infection or encouraging it by sending 
out diseased chinch bugs does not serve the best interests of the 
farmer, since his attention is thus diverted from other and more 
efficient methods of combating the pests. 
14. The reported successes of former years on the part of farmers 
are believed to be due to the following causes: (1) Failure to recog- 
nize spontaneous outbreaks of the disease because of previous arti- 
