THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 29 



where the fences are new and consequently no old stuff has had time 

 to accumulate along them, the Chinch Bug is never heard of. These 

 facts indicate that the mother insects must very generally pass the 

 winter in the old dead stuff that usually gathers along fences. Hence, 

 by way of precaution, it is advisable, whenever possible, to burn up 

 such dead stuff in the winter or early in the spring, and particularly 

 to rake together and burn up the old corn-stalks, instead of plowing 

 them in, or allowing them, as is often done, to lie littering about on 

 some piece of waste ground. It is true, agriculturally speaking, this 

 is bad farming; but it is better to lose the manure contained in the 

 corn-stalks than to have one's crop destroyed by insects. Whenever 

 such small infected patches in a grain field are noticed early in the 

 season, the rest of the field may often be saved by carting dry straw 

 on to them and burning the straw on the spot, Chinch Bugs, green 

 wheat and all ; and this will be still easier to do when the bugs start 

 along the edge of the field. If, as frequently happens, a piece of 

 small grain is found about harvest-time to be so badly shrunken up 

 by the bug as not to be worth cutting, the owner of it ought always 

 to set fire to it and burn it up along with its ill-savored inhabitants. 

 Thus, not only will the insect, be prevented from migrating on to 

 the adjacent corn-fields, but its future multiplication will be consid- 

 erably checked. 



A very simple, cheap and easy method of prevention was recom- 

 mended in the Prairie Farmer of April 19th, 1SG2, by Mr. Wilson 

 Phelps, of Crete, Illinois. It may very probably be effectual when 

 the bugs are not too numerous, and certainly can do no harm : 



With twelve bushels of spring wheat mix one bushel of winter 

 rye, and sow in the usual manner. The rye not heading out, but 

 spreading out close to the ground, the bugs will content themselves 

 with eating it, until the wheat is too far advanced to be injured by 

 them. There will, of course, be no danger of the winter rye mixing 

 with the spring wheat. 



When Chinch Bugs are likely to march, as they often do, after the 

 fashion of Army-worms, from an infected to an uninfected field, Mr. H. 

 J. Everest, of Stoughton, Dane county, Wisconsin, recommends the 

 following plan, which is stated to have been tried by several persons 

 and found to be perfectly effectual, and which is substantially the 

 same as that referred to on page 23 : 



Take common fence-boards, six inches or less wide, and run them 

 around the piece, set edgewise, and so that the bugs cannot get under 

 them or between the joints, and then spread either pine or coal tar 

 on the upper edge, and they will not cross it. The tar needs renew- 

 ing till the edge gets saturated, so that it will keep wet and not dry 

 in any more, and either kind of tar is effectual. Then dig holes close 

 to the boards, about like a post-hole, once in four or five rods, and 

 run a strip of tar from the top of the board to the bottom on the out- 

 side opposite the hole, and they will leave the board, and in trying to 

 get around the tarred stripe will slide into the hole, where they will 

 be obliged to remain till they can be buried at leisure, and new holes 

 opened for more victims. It is seldom one has to fence more than 



