CHINCH BUG WEST OF MISSISSIPPI RIVER. aT 
ters, and very soon their ravages were in evidence. By the middle 
of April the plants were turning to a red color, and the stems were 
black and dry from their attacks, very few plants escaping, some 
plants having as many as 200 bugs massed on them. Very few eggs 
had been deposited up to the middle of April, but from this time on 
until May 1 eggs were abundant. 
The eggs began to hatch about the Ist of May, and in one week’s 
time the wheat fields were swarming with tiny red bugs, much of the 
wheat dying from their severe attack combined with the effects of 
lack of moisture. However, the situation was soon rapidly changed, 
for rains came, and by the Ist of June there was hardly a living 
bug to be found, either young or adult, but there were numbers of 
unhatched eggs left unharmed on the plants. The wheat partially 
outgrew this damage and made a fair crop, while the young corn 
escaped injury. 
Many eggs hatched after the rains ceased, and the bugs from these 
eggs, together with the few that survived the drenching rains of May 
and June, succeeded in getting to the corn, where they bred in large 
numbers. By September, having left the Indian corn, which at this 
time was becoming dry, the young bugs were plentiful on cane and 
kafir. These bugs matured on the cane, kafir, and succulent grasses, 
and large numbers went into hibernation in the fall among the grasses. 
The spring of 1909 was quite late in opening. A big snow on 
March 8 remained on the fields until March 20, and for several days 
afterwards the ground was alternately wet and frozen. During the 
last two days of March there was bright, warm sunshine, and the bugs 
began to move about. On April 3 oe Tee of sedge grass, Andro- 
pogon scoparius, in which the insects hibernated, resembled living 
masses of crawling bugs, and before nightfall great swarms were flying; 
this continued during the next few days, and the wheat fields had 
now become badly infested. The chinch bugs commenced mating 
very soon after reaching the wheat fields, and in a few days egg 
laying began. Eggs were very numerous about wheat plants by 
April 22, some were hatching, and by May 1 young bugs were abund- 
ant. The massing in large numbers on single plants, which was so 
noticeable in the spring of 1908, was entirely lacking in 1909; seldom 
were there more than a dozen bugs on a plant, although nearly every 
plant was infested. 
The entire month of April, together with the first ten days of May, 
1909, were exceedingly dry and wheat suffered from lack of moisture. 
There was no noticeable injury to the young wheat from attacks of 
the old hibernating bugs and not much from the combined attack of 
both the old and young bugs, until the first week of May, when the 
wheat failed rapidly, owing to the great number of the insects and 
the lack of moisture. Here, again, heavy rains of four days (May 
8465°—Bull. 95, pt. 3—11——2 
