THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 17 



PAST HISTORY OF THE CHINCH BUG. 



The first record we have of the prevalence of the Chinch Bug 

 was in the old Revolutionary times in North Carolina, where it was 

 confounded with the Hessian Fly, an insect just then imported from 

 Europe into the United States. Ever since those times it has been 

 an epidemic pest, in particular years, in North and South Carolina 

 and in Virginia. The great American entomologist, Thomas Say, in 

 1831, when he had been residing in Indiana for six years, was the 

 first to name and describe it scientifically. He states that he " took a 

 single specimen on the Eastern shore of Virginia;" whence we may 

 reasonably infer that it was then either unknown or very rare in Indi- 

 ana, and probably also in the other Western States. In Missouri it 

 did considerable damage as early as 1854, for Jas. Pleasant of Fox 

 Oreek, St. Louis county, informed me that he had known it since that 

 year, and that he had been previously acquainted with it in Virginia. 

 Wm. M. Beal of Edina, Knox county, writes that it has existed and 

 done more or less damage there since 1856, though it has scarcely 

 been heard of since 1865. Mr. A. H. Roberts of Gray's Summit, 

 Franklin county, informs me that it has not been in that neighbor- 

 hood more than eight or ten years, and Mr. C. S. Jeffries, of Boles' 

 post office in the same county, never heard of it till about fifteen 

 years ago, though he has lived there for the last fifty years. 



If proper records existed, we should doubtless find that it at- 

 tracted attention in Missouri at a much earlier day, for in Illinois it was 

 noticed as long back as 1840, in Hancock county, where it was 

 absurdly supposed to have been introduced by the Mormons of Nau- 

 voo, and was called the "Mormon louse" 



In 1868, owing to the great drouth, this insect, as I have stated 

 elsewhere, was quite injurious in many sections of our own State, 

 and especially in the southwest. In the extreme northern portion 

 they began to attract attention about the first of May, but the wet 

 weather that occurred about that time caused them to disappear. In 

 the more central counties the earliest sown wheat suffered but little 

 from their depredations, though that which was sown later, was re- 

 duced about one-third. The conditions being favorable, they rap- 

 idly increased during the Summer, and in the fall, the second brood 

 was so numerous that great fears were entertained for the safety of 

 the crops of 1869. Let us be thankful, however, that the excessive 

 rains of last spring and summer, though deplored and regretted by 

 many, had the effect to so thoroughly drown out these little pests, as 

 to make them comparatively harmless; for the only place in which I 

 heard of their doing serious harm was at Tinney's Grove in Ray 

 county. Seeming misfortune is often a blessing in disguise, and 

 though the corn crop was lessened by the heavy rains, the wheat 

 crop in all probability would have suffered far worse, had the season 

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