PARASITIC FUNGI. 45 
Doctor Shimer, however, was the first to call attention to the wide- 
spread and fatal effects of fungous diseases among chinch bugs, 
and while his explanations therefor seem now crude and illogical, 
his observations were made with such care and accuracy that we have 
not yet had occasion to materially revise them. Under date of July 
16, 1865, he makes this observation: “* * * [found many dying 
on the low creek bottom land from the effects of some disease, while 
they are yet in the larval state—a remarkable and rare phenomenon 
for insects thus in such a wholesale manner to be dying without at- 
taining their maturity, and no insect enemy or other efficient cause 
to be observed capable of producing this important result.” Again, 
under date of July 22: “ On low grounds the chinch bugs are dead 
from the disease above alluded to, and the same disease is spreading 
to the hills and high prairies.” 
Under this date also he speaks of the very wet weather, and states 
that in a barley field the chinch bugs began to die at about the same 
time that they did on the low creek bottom, and that they rapidly met 
the same fate, so that few of them lived to find their way to a neigh- 
boring cornfield, while under date of August 8 he states that of those 
that migrated to the cornfields “ very few are to be found remaining 
alive; but the ground around the base of the cornhills is almost liter- 
ally covered with their mouldering, decomposing dead bodies. They 
are dead everywhere, not lying on the ground alone, but sticking to 
the blades and stalks of corn in great numbers, in all stages of de- 
velopment, larva, pupa, and imago.” 
“This disease among the chinch bugs was associated with the long- 
continued wet, cloudy, cool weather that prevailed during a greater 
‘portion of the period of their development. * * *” 
These are precisely the conditions under which these fungi have 
been observed to prove the most fatal to the chinch bug during recent 
years, where their introduction among the host insects was accom- 
plished by artificial means. Although Doctor Shimer probably never 
anticipated the artificial cultivation of his “ disease,” and the results 
which have since been obtained from its artificial dissemination in the 
fields, yet his careful and painstaking studies must ever be associated 
with the application of fungous diseases in the destruction of insects 
in America. It is certainly to be regretted that such practical ento- 
mologists as Mr. B: D. Walsh and Dr. C. V. Riley should have 
expressed themselves so discouragingly regarding Doctor Shimer’s 
observations and conclusions, Doctor Riley, as late as 1870, even 
going so far as to ridicule the theory of disease being in any way 
responsible for the death of the chinch bugs observed by Doctor 
Shimer.* 
@Second Report State Hntomologist of Missouri, pp. 24-25, 1870. 
