PARASITIC FUNGI. 47 
The scene of action now changes from Ilhnois to Kansas, and to 
Prof. F. H. Snow belongs the credit of first applying the knowledge 
that had been gained up to that time (1889) by confining supposed 
healthy chinch bugs with others affected by either one or the other of 
the fungi, or possibly both Entomophthora and Sporotrichum, and 
using the bugs thus infected for the propagation, in the field, of the 
disease from which they had died. 
As early as 1887-88 Professor Snow expressed, in the Sixth Bien- 
nial Report of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture, the opinion 
that “in the warfare of man against his insect foes a most valuable 
ally will be found in the bacterial and fungoid diseases which may be 
artificially introduced when nature fails to come to our aid,” an 
opinion at that time largely based upon the investigations of Pro- 
fessor Forbes and his own observations of the chinch bug in Kansas, 
thus paving the way for the experiments of 1889. Professor Snow 
had now obtained a specific determination of the fungous disease as 
(Empusa) Entomophthora aphidis Hoffman, although there is some 
ground for the suspicion that Sporotrichum globuliferum was also 
present. 
Entomophthora aphidis was already known to affect Hemiptera in 
Germany and the United States. Dr. Roland Thaxter @ states that, as 
early as 1886, his attention had been called to the attacks of this fun- 
gus on aphides in the greenhouses at Cambridge, Mass., where it acted 
as a decided check, and later, in 1887, Dr. L. O. Howard had called his 
attention to great quantities of aphides dying with the same disease 
on clover near the Agricultural Department buildings in Washington, 
DEC. 
FIELD AND LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS IN INDIANA. 
On July 20, 1889, the writer, at that time a special agent of the 
Division of Entomology of the United States Department of Agri- 
culture, stationed at Lafayette, Ind., received, through the kindness 
of Professor Snow, enough material with which to make some experi- 
ments, the chinch bug being at that time very abundant at Lafayette, 
and an exceptionally good opportunity thus being offered for ex- 
perimentation. The results of these experiments were published in 
detail in Bulletin 22 (old series), United States Department of Agri- 
culture, Division of Entomology (pp. 55-63), but as this was the 
first series of experiments carried out with a view of testing with 
exactness the precise effects of varying degrees of temperature and 
atmospheric moisture on the growth of the Entomophthora, and care- 
fully following out the progress of the disease under varying meteor- 
4 Memoirs Boston Society of Natural History, Vol. IV, p. 176. 
