56 THE CHINCH BUG. 
suspected that the latter was the true solution of the problem. We 
know that most domestic animals or fowls thrive best and are 
the most vigorous when kept in small flocks, while among humans 
the maximum of health and minimum of disease is obtained where 
the individuals are scattered over a moderate area per capita and the 
atmosphere is dry and pure; low, damp, and ill-ventilated quarters, 
when overcrowded, being especially fatal, particularly to the young. 
The individual in perfect health and vigor may in one sense be said 
to be above and out of reach of disease, and before the two can be 
brought together there must be some interacting element that will 
bring the individual down to a point where he can be reached by the 
disease; that is, the disease can rise only to a certain plane and the 
victim needs to be first attacked by some element not necessarily 
fatal in itself, but sufficiently depressing to bring the individual 
down to where he can be grasped by the disease. 
2 
METEOROLOGICAL INFLUENCES FAVORING DEVELOPMENT OF FUNGOUS ENEMIES OF 
THE CHINCH BUG. 
When human beings are overcrowded and some disease is intro- 
duced among them, everyone knows the effect of a low, damp locality 
under a high temperature and with both air and water more or less 
stagnant. Even the once healthy and vigorous are more or less 
reduced and enervated by their environment, and thus brought within 
the influence of the deadly disease. Again, if an individual is 
stricken and forsakes his miasmatic surroundings for those more 
salubrious, the disease may still overcome him, but seldom spreads 
to others, except such as come in actual contact with either himself or 
his belongings, while if not too much reduced before changing his 
habitation the chances are much more favorable for his recovery. 
It seems to the writer that in this matter of metorological conditions 
and their relation to the effect of entomogenous fungi on the chinch 
bug we are really dealing with the same problem in a different field. 
The young chinch bug which has not yet come into possession of its 
full measure of strength, and the spent females, which have lost theirs, 
fall easiest as the prey to these fungi, while the fully developed bugs, 
endowed with health and vigor, appear to be to some extent immune 
to the attacks of these enemies, and if not massed in large bodies they 
seem still more likely to escape destruction. In the timothy meadows 
of northeastern Ohio an occasional dead adult has been found in late 
autumn, but the fungus had certainly not claimed many victims, 
though both the long and the short winged forms were present in con- 
siderable abundance, clustered about the roots of grass. With Forbes 
the writer believes that after becoming fully matured the chinch bug 
‘is, largely at least, beyond the reach of Sporotrichum. What is the 
