55 
we have found healthy adults in bulbs after the latter had been thrown 
out by the plow and lain in the sun for over a month. We have also 
found them developing in bulbs in ground plowed in May and again 
in July, indicating that little or nothing can be accomplished by sum 
mer fallow. 
The most practical and probably the most effective method of destroy- 
ing the food plant of the pest is to sow rye or some other crop on the 
land the first season after breaking. 
THE CHINCH BUG. 
; (Blissus leucopterus Say.) 
The history and distribution of the Chinch Bug in Indiana offers 
some problems not only very perplexing but exceedingly difficult to 
solve. In fact, we shall here make no attempt toward a solution, but 
rather to separate a few of the many complex elements which are 
thought to influence the distribution and numbers of the pest, and to 
some extent at least indicate how far they may be considered or per- 
haps eliminated entirely from any independent relation to the subject, 
thereby affording aid to the future investigator. 
It is well known that although Thomas Say, at the time he described 
the species, was residing at New Harmony, Indiana, nevertheless his 
description was drawn from a single specimen taken by himself on the 
Eastern Shore of Virginia, and so far as we know he may have died 
ignorant of its occurrence in his own or any of the adjoining States. 
Recently, Professor Forbes has collected some data showing that the 
species was destructively abundant in Edwards County, Illinois, as 
early as 1828, and was also observed in Richland County in 1823. 
Strictly in accordance with the above, while that portion of Illinois 
lying adjacent to Indiana, separated only by the Wabash River, has 
suffered agaiu and again through the ravages of the Chinch Bug, crops 
on the Indiana side have not often suffered from any extensive or wide- 
spread ravages of the pest. Not only this, but at the present time the 
worst infested portion of Indiana is composed of those counties whose 
western border is the Wabash River, which separates them from Illi- 
nois, and from whence the insect occurs in continually diminishing 
numbers northward and eastward until we reach the northern coun- 
ties of La Porte, St. Joseph, Elkhart, La Grange and Steuben, where its 
depredations are almost entirely unknown.* Indeed, during the years 
when they are the most numerous elsewhere, I have found them in these 
counties only with difficulty, and few of the farmers know what the 
insect is like. In almost exactly the same latitude in De Kalb County, 
Illinois, within 60 miles of Lake Michigan, they have been a serious 
pest since 1855. 
* The only exception known to me was in Elkhart County, where they were re- 
ported to Mr. J. R. Dodge, Statistician of the Department of Agriculture in 1857, 
(See Bull. 17, U. 8S. Dept. Agri., Div. Ent., p 9.) Mr. Dodge has very kindly looked 
up this matter, and writes me that these bugs were oaly reported from one locality in 
very limited numbers and did no appreciable damage.—F.. M. W. 
