REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 69 
The weather has been very wet since the 1st of July, and the barley above 
alluded to, which I plowed beneath the ground, did not die, but assumed a yellow, 
sickly appearance; in its shady, compressed, unnatural position, the ends of the 
heads project from beneath the furrows. The Chinch-bugs also remained alive for 
a time, but feeding on the sickly grain and shaded from the sunlight, what little we 
had were attacked by disease in the same manner and about the same time as those 
on. the low creek-bottom lands, meeting very rapidly the same fate, so that very few 
of them ever found theiz way to the neighboring corn. 
July 28.—In the fields where sixty days ago I saw plenty of eggs, and forty-two 
days ago an abundance of young Chinch-bugs, the imago are beginning to develop 
quite pientifully. Great numbers in all stages of their development are dying of 
the prevailing disease. 
August 8.—The majority of the Chinch-bugs yet alive are in the imago state, but 
they are being rapidly destroyed by the prevailing epidemic disease—more fatal to 
them than the plague of Asiatic cholera ever was to man; more fatal than any re- 
corded disease among men or animals since time began. Scarcely one in a thousand 
of the vast hosts ef young bugs observed at the middle of June yet remain alive, but 
plenty of dead cnes may be seen everywhere, lying on the ground, covered with the 
common mold of decomposing animal matter and nothing else, even when ex- 
amined by the microscope. Even of those that migrated to corn-fields a few weeks 
ago in such numbers as to cover the lower half of the corn-stalks, very few are to 
be found remaining alive; but the ground arotind the base of the corn-stalks every 
few days is to be found literally covered with their moldering, decomposing dead 
bodies. This isa matter so common as to be observed and often spcken of by farmers. 
They are dead everywhere; not lying on the ground alone, but sticking to the blades 
and stalks of cornin great numbers, in all stages of their development—larva, pupa, 
and imago 
August 22.—It is almost impossible to find even a few cabinet specimens of Chinch- 
bugs alive, so that I am quite sorry that { did not secure a large supply of specimens 
while they were so numerous in former years; for it really appears quite probable 
that even cabinet specimens will be hard to secure, whereby to remember the fallen 
race of the unnumbered millions of former years. 
September 15.—After a whole day’s searching in the corn-fields I have just been 
able to find two larve and a few imago Chinch-bugs, against the great numbers 
above alluded to in the corn about this time last year. 
* * a * *¥ * 
It is generally believed among entomologists that insect enemies are the most 
efficient means in nature for exterminating noxious insects: but in this remarkable 
fact in the history of insects the great epidemic of 1865 (there can be no doubt about 
this being an epidemic disease, because the insects died without attaining their ma- 
turity) we find a greater enemy, the greatest insect enemy ever recorded, a dreadful 
“plague,” that in afew days almost utterly annihilated a race of beings living in 
the northern part of the valley of the Mississippi, outmumbering all the human be- 
* ings that have ever lived on this planet since the morning of creation. 
This disease among the Chinch-bugs was associated with the long-continued 
wet, cloudy, cold weather that prevailed during a greater portion of the period of 
their development, and doubtless was in a measure produced by deficient light, heat, 
and electricity, combined with excessive humidity of the atmosphere, whereby an 
imperfect physical (‘‘ bug”) organization was developed. The disease was at its 
maximum during the moist weather that followed the cold rains of June and the 
first part of July. The young Chinch-bug spent a great portion of its time on or 
near the ground, where its body was colder than the atmosphere, hence upon philo- 
sophical principles there must have been an excessive precipitation of watery vapor 
in the bronchial tubes. These are the facts in the case, but in the midst of the great 
obscurity that envelops epidemic diseases among men, it would be only idle specu- 
lation to attempt to define the cause more definitely than the physiological laws 
already observed seem to indicate. At all events it will require many years of 
warm, dry summers, and accompanying winters of plenty of snow for protection, 
to re-instate the lost innumerable armies of this insect. 
During the summer of 1866 the Chinch-bugs were very scarce in all the early 
spring, and up to near the harvest I was not able, with the most diligent search, to 
find one. At harvest I did succeed in finding a few in some localities. 
Professor Forbes took up the study of the Chinch-bug disease in 
August, 1882, and has published several interesting accounts of his 
results. A short summary was published in his first report as State 
