Siath Annual Report. 9 
_ eral different orders. The gray fungus of the chinch-bug, called 
in our reports Empusa aphidis, is nearly related to the common 
house-fly fungus. 
Dr. Henry Shimer, of Illinois, was’ the first to observe the 
outbreak of a contagious disease among chinch-bugs. In the 
Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences for 1867 
he gives an account of the destruction of.chinch-bugs in Illinois 
in 1865 by what was undoubtedly Sporotrichum or Empusa. He 
described the disease as an ‘‘epidemic doubtless produced in a 
measure by deficient light, heat, and electricity, combined with 
excessive humidity of the atmosphere, whereby an imperfect 
physical organization was developed.’’ While Doctor Shimer 
did not understand the nature of the disease, he was, neverthe- 
less, in advance of his entomological contemporaries —Walsh, of 
Illinois, and Riley, of Missouri—who ridiculed the idea of a 
contagious disease among chinch-bugs. Ten years later, Dr. 
Cyrus Thomas was the first to suggest the true character of the 
disease : 
“‘The first definite suggestion among us of the possibility of the economic use 
of fungus insect disease was made by the well-known coleopterist, Dr. J. L. Le- 
Conte, in 1873, when, in a public address, he recommended ‘careful study of epi- 
demic diseases of insects, especially those of a fungoid nature, and experiments 
on the most effective means of introducing and communicating such diseases at 
pleasure.’’’ 
If we omit an account of the experiments of Dr. H. A. Hagen, 
of Harvard University, in 1879, toward the use of yeast as an 
insecticide, based on a misconception of the nature of the yeast 
plant, the first experimental work with insect diseases was 
taken up in 1883 by Doctor Forbes. In that year he began the 
study of the cabbage-worm disease, which he identified with 
flacherie. He made cultures of bacteria from the alimentary ca- 
nal and body fluids of sick larvee, and conveyed the disease to dis- 
tant points by sending dead diseased caterpillars as an infection 
material, thus being undoubtedly the first to successfully use 
those methods of contagion which we have employed on so large 
a scale among chinch-bugs in Kansas. 
