Experiments with Chinch-Bug Infection in 1894. 



I. SUMMARY OF RESULTS. 



1. — Extent of Experiments. 



During the year 1894, field experiments for the destruction of chinch 

 bugs by the artificial introduction of contagious disease have been prose- 

 cuted upon a larger scale than in any preceding year. No fewer than 8,000 

 packages of infection were sent out to individual farmers in Kansas, Mis- 

 souri, and Oklahoma territory. The states of Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri 

 and Illinois having followed the example of Kansas in the establishment 

 of distributing stations, the demand from those states upon the Kansas sta- 

 tion was very much smaller than it otherwise would have been, although 

 the demand from the state of Missouri was larger than in any preceding 

 year. 



In addition to the distribution of infected material from the central sta- 

 tion at the State University, 50 auxiliary distributing stations were estab- 

 lished, in as many different counties in Kansas and Missouri, 38 of these 

 stations being located in Kansas and 12 in Missouri. It was anticipated 

 that the establishment of these substations would reduce the demand upon 

 the central station, but this anticipation was not realized, as large numbers 

 of farmers apparently preferred to make certain that the infection was gen- 

 uine by obtaining it from the laboratory of the central station. 



2. — Is the Chinch Bug Moving North? 



The demand for infection from the laboratory from the southern third 

 of the state of Kansas was far less extensive than in the preceding years. 

 Not a single application for the establishment of a substation was received 

 from the counties of Barber, Harper, Kingman, Sedgwick, Sumner, Butler, 

 Cowley, Elk, Chautauqua, Montgomery, Neosho, Labette, Crawford, and 

 Cherokee. 



In the year 1893, individual farmers from the above-named counties sent 

 in applications for infection to the number of 1,303 ; in the year 1894, less 

 than 15 per cent, of that number, or a total of only 195 applications, were 

 received from the same area. A trip to Labette county the last week in 

 June convinced the writer that the falling off in the number of applications 

 from this district was not from loss of faith in the good effects of the infec" 

 tion, but from the almost entire disappearance of the bugs. Indeed, the 



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