70 THE CHINCH BUG. 
when smarting under a heavy loss, will often take such long-range 
precautions as to sow belts of flax, hemp, clover, or buckwheat around 
his wheat field once; but if the chinch bugs do not appear, and he sees 
the useless investment of time, labor, and seed, he will be likely to con- 
clude next year to take the risk and do nothing. For the present, then, 
we have no method whereby we can prevent the chinch bugs from 
taking up their abode in wheat fields or timothy meadows and 
raising their enormous families there, except to destroy the adults 
in their winter quarters. 
The writer once tried to destroy the young in a wheat field by 
spraying with kerosene emulsion the small areas of whitening grain 
that indicated where the pests were massed in greatest abundance. 
The result was unsatisfactory, and it is very doubtful if it is possible 
to apply this measure with any degree of success, and we are forced 
to the conclusion that, for the present at least, we shall be obliged 
to rely upon the measures previously given. It therefore becomes 
of the utmost importance to clean up the roadsides, and along fences 
and patches of woodland, as well as any other places likely to afford 
protection for the hibernating chinch bugs. There are of course 
obstacles in the way of carrying out this plan generally over any 
large area of country, and especially in sections where the rail fence 
predominates. But as the country gets older it will be found that 
it is not chinch bugs alone that seek these places in which to pass 
the winter, but myriads of the other insect foes of the farmer as 
well, and that careful attention to the condition of roadsides, lanes, 
hedgerows, and waste places about the farms, during the season 
when insects seek out these places wherein to pass the winter, will 
pay well for the time expended in that direction. It may come 
about that some phase of the street-cleaning reform may invade the 
country, and it is certain that if such were to occur it would, in time, 
save the country enough to go far toward reducing the expense of 
securing good roads. In fact, the term “ good roads” ought to 
include the proper care of the roadsides, as well as the grading and 
macadamizing of the roadbed itself. 
There are at present so-called weed laws in many States, and, 
though more or less of a dead letter in most cases, these laws are 
steps in the proper direction. The time when insect pests will be 
looked upon in the eye of the law as so many public nuisances, and 
the harboring of them a corresponding crime, may be a long way off, 
but as it gradually draws nearer to us we shall come to learn that, 
after all, it is the rational view to take and will go far toward solv- 
ing not only the chinch bug problem, but many others of a similar 
nature. So far as the chinch bug is concerned, when we burn over 
the waste lands and accumulated rubbish about our farms in autumn 
or winter, we are simply applying the same check that the dusky 
