46 THE WHITE-FUNGUS DISEASE IN KANSAS. 
ficial sowing of infection, and also failure to use check, or untreated, 
fields as a basis of comparison, thus claiming the outbreak as directly 
due to artificial infection; (2) failure to distinguish the skins of 
molted bugs from dead bugs; (3) mistaking the scattering of chinch 
bugs in cornfields for evidence of their death by fungus disease when 
carcasses were not present as proof. 
Approved methods of combating the chinch bug.—The long-drawn- 
out fight against the chinch bug has brought to light many methods 
of combating it, which, when properly applied, have proved very 
beneficial; but the farmers are very busy men and can not devote a 
great deal of time to this work, and for this reason it seems best to 
speak only of methods which have proved the most practical. We 
can not hope to exterminate the chinch bug from any given district 
by any artificial methods now known; we must depend upon natural 
causes to do that, but in the meantime we can do much to stay their 
ravages. Their numbers can be greatly reduced and valuable crops 
protected from their depredations. The failure to control these and 
many other pests is not to be ascribed to the lack of practical means 
of control, but rather to the failure on the part of farmers and fruit- 
growers to avail themselves of the methods of control which have 
been worked out, and especially in the case of the chinch bug to the 
failure to secure concerted action throughout the area of infestation. 
The two seasons when practical measures can be applied are: The 
fall, after the chinch bugs have gone into their winter quarters, and 
the summer season, at the time when the bugs are leaving the grain 
fields or immediately after they have massed themselves upon the 
first rows of corn. 
Fall treatment.—Since the chinch bugs winter as adults in grassy 
places and in rubbish of all kinds, grasslands, and weed patches, 
every place where there is a possible chance for them to winter over 
should be burned off in the fall after they have gone into hibernation. 
From observations made during 1910 while collecting bugs from 
their winter quarters, it was quite definitely determined that the 
bugs very much prefer bunch grass to anything else as a place to 
pass the winter, and where such grasses are growing along fences 
and roads adjoining cornfields they will be found to harbor vast 
numbers of bugs. So, if it is impractical to burn off all grasslands, 
those adjoining cornfields should, at least, be burned. 
The burning does not necessarily kill the bugs, for they work down 
into the roots of the grass, where the heat caused by the burning is 
not sufficient to kill them, but those that escape the burning are left 
much more exposed to the effects of changes in temperature through- 
out the winter months and are likely to perish before spring. The 
drier the ground is when the burning is done the more effective will 
it prove, for when the ground is dry the grass will burn off closer 
