52 THE CHINCH BUG. 
daunted labors, in the face of much skepticism and opposition, has 
won for him the admiration of his fellow-workers, even among those 
who were long in extreme doubt as to the success of his labor. He has 
done more than any other one person to call attention to the possi- 
bilities of practical benefits to be derived by farmers themselves; has 
done more to advertise the merits of these fungous diseases among 
the masses than anyone else, and, in fact, has made the “ chinch-bug 
fungus ” almost a household word over the entire United States. 
It is therefore all the more to be lamented that he should have ac- 
cepted and published in his several reports the unsubstantiated state- 
ments of farmers whose testimony on a matter of this nature is, as 
every entomologist knows, absolutely worthless unless accompanied 
by specimens. His own personal experience in this direction and in 
several States had long ago led the writer to disregard all reports 
relating to the efficiency or inefficiency of these fungous diseases 
among chinch bugs, when such came from the ordinary farmer with- 
out being accompanied by specimens for examination. The cast 
pupal skins of the chinch bug pass with nonentomologists very well 
for dead bugs, and if the former have been attacked by the ordinary 
white molds the deception, except to the eye of an expert, is com- 
plete. 
There is probably not an entomologist who has distributed these 
fungous diseases among farmers who has not found just such con- 
ditions as did Professor Lugger in Minnesota, where it was impos- 
sible to determine whether these diseases had been introduced arti- 
ficially or whether they were already present and had been over- 
looked. In the writer’s experience, while receiving chinch bugs from 
different parts of Ohio to be infected with the disease, consignments 
have come to him with the insects dying and others dead and covered 
with Sporotrichum, showing that this was already present and that 
the very utmost that we could expect to accomplish would be to aid in 
locally spreading the contagion. Besides this, the writer has sent 
material to farmers sufficient to start the fungus in their fields. 
knowing perfectly well that it would be a considerable time before 
actual benefits could by any possibility be expected to materialize, 
and within a week received the astonishing information that the fun- 
gus was so perfectly successful that the bugs all disappeared within a 
few days after the application of the disease. There is little doubt 
that the distribution of upward of 7,000 boxes of these fungi to 
the farmers of Kansas has accomplished a vast amount of good, but 
beyond this it is impossible to go. Of Professor Snow’s laboratory 
work or the labors of himself and assistants in the fields no criticisms 
can be made, and there will be occasion to quote from these in future 
pages of this bulletin. 
