15 



This can be accomplished by burning all dried grass, leaves, or other 

 rubbish during winter or early spring. The burning of all such 

 grass will destroy thousands of bugs in their winter quarters; but 

 sometimes the matted bluegrass remains green in winter, or the 

 weather is not sufficiently dry to enable the farmer to burn over 

 such places. In such cases a flock of sheep, if given the freedom of 

 the fields during winter and spring, will eat off all hving vegetation 

 and trample the ground with their small feet, so that not only is all 

 covering for the bugs removed, but also the bugs are crushed to 

 death. So it is with the matted grass along roadsides and fences, 



Fig. 8.— Poorly kept roadside with rail feme overgrown with brambles, thus affording protection for 

 large numbers of destructive insects during winter. (Author's illustration. ) 



especially the Virginia worm rail fence (fig. 8). The ease with which 

 the narrow strip of grass land along a post-and-wire fence can be kept 

 free of matted grass and leaves, as compared with that along a hedge 

 or rail fence, indicates that there may be an entomological factor 

 connected with the modern fence that has been overlooked, giving 

 it, in this respect, an advantage over the more ancient form. A 

 good illustration of the fact that large numbers of chinch bugs may be 

 in hiding among fallen leaves in woods and other places and escape 

 detection is shown by the fact that a quantity of dried leaves from 

 about a vineyard located on a narrow neck of land about a quarter of 

 a mile from the Bay of Sandusky on the one side, and about H 



[Cir. 113] 



