THE CHINGCA BUG. i 
FOOD PLANTS. 
Over the western country the major portion of the damage is to 
grain fields, including corn and also such forage crops as millet, 
Hungarian grass, and the nonsaccharin sorghums, the outbreak gen- 
erally originating in wheat, rye, or barley fields and the bugs migrat- 
ing at harvest to the cornfields. In the eastern part of the country, 
where the timothy meadows are the most seriously infested, this is 
not the case, and here the migrations are as likely, or even more so, 
to be to the timothy meadows as to the fields of corn where both are 
equally within reach. Oats are not lable to infestation. The 
chinch bugs attack sugar cane in Mexico, according to Mr. Albert 
Koebele. They are known to attack the following grasses: Forked 
beard-grass,! broom  beard-grass,’ oat-grass,* bur-grass,‘ millet, 
witch grass,° barnyard grass,° Phragmites sp.?, sorghum, kafir, large 
crab-erass,’ timothy, yellow foxtail,’ green foxtail grass," Bermuda 
grass,’ and what is locally known in Florida as St. Augustine grass. 
Prof. Lawrence Bruner has also found it feeding upon so-called 
buckwheat." 
It will thus be seen that the insect has an ample food supply out- 
side of the cultivated fields. 
LOSSES CAUSED BY CHINCH BUGS. 
It would appear that this pest first made its presence known by 
its ravages in the wheat fields of North Carolina farmers; for we are 
told that ‘‘in 1785 the fields were so overrun with them as to threaten 
a total destruction of the grain. * * * And at length the crops 
were so destroyed in some districts that they (the farmers) were 
obliged to wholly abandon the sowing of wheat. It was four or five 
years that they continued so numerous, at this time.’’” 
In the year 1809, as stated by Mr. J. W. Jefferys * the chinch bug 
again became destructive in North Carolina to such an extent that 
in Orange County farmers were obliged to suspend the sowing of 
wheat for two years. In 1839 ' the pest again became destructive 
1 Andropogon furcatus. 
2 Andropogon scoparius. 
3 Arrhenatherum sp. 
4 Cenchrus tribuloides. 
®» Panicum capillare. 
6 Panicum crus-galli. 
7 Syntherisma sanguinalis. 
8 Ixophorus glaucus. 
9 Ixophorus viridis. 
10 Capriola dactylon. 
1 Polygonum dumetorum or P. convolvulus. 
12 Webster, Noah. A brief history of epidemic and pestilential diseases, v. 1, p. 279. Hartford, 1799. 
Quoted in Fitch, Asa. [First] Report on the Noxious, Beneficial, and other Insects of the State of New 
York, p. 279. Albany, 1855. 
13 Jeffreys, J. W. Chinch bug. In The Cultivator, Albany, v. 6, no. 12, p. 200-201, Dec., 1839. 
14 Gibbes, W.S. The season, crops and insects in South-Carolina. Jn The Cultivator, Albany, v. 6, no. 
6, p. 103-104, August, 1839. 
