36 SECOND ANNUAL REPORT OP 



because the grain-grower cannot distinguish a Baldwin Seedling from 

 a High top apple ; or the grain-grower the nurseryman because 

 the nurseryman cannot tell Mediterranean from Tea wheat, or Club 

 from Fife. I do, however, entertain an abiding hope that by the pres- 

 ent very general and praiseworthy movement towards the populari- 

 zation of Natural History, and by the dissemination of Entomological 

 Reports, a better knowledge of this practically important subject will 

 soon exist in the community. Our farmers will then, not so often wage 

 a war of extermination against their best friends, the cannibal and 

 parasitic insects, while they overlook and neglect the very plant- 

 feeders which are doing all the damage, and upon which the others 

 are feeding in the very manner in which a Wise Providence has ap- 

 pointed them to adopt. 



RECAPITULATION. 



The following important points in the history of the Chinch Bug, 

 may be considered as firmly established : 



1st. Chinch Bugs hybernate in the perfect or winged state in any 

 old dry rubbish, under dead leaves, in old straw, in corn-shucks and 

 corn-stalks, among weeds in fence-corners, etc., etc. Therefore all 

 such substances should be burned up,as far as possible, inthe spring. 



2nd. The earlier email grain can be sowed in the spring, the 

 more likely it is to escape the Chinch Bug ; for it will then get ripe be- 

 fore the spring brood of bugs has had time to become fully developed 

 at the expense of the grain. 



3d. The harder the ground is where the grain is sowed, the less 

 chance there is for the Chinch Bug to penetrate to the roots of the 

 grain and lay its eggs thereon. Hence the importance of fall-plough- 

 ing and using the roller upon land that is loose and friable. And 

 hence, if old corn-ground is sufficiently clean, it is a good plan to har- 

 row in a crop of small grain upon it without ploughing it at all. 

 Moreover this rolling plan should always be adopted, as the best 

 wheat-growers both in this country and in Europe attest that the 

 heavier the ground for wheat is rolled, the better will be the crop. 



4th. A single heavy rain immediately checks up the propagation 

 of the Chinch Bugs. Continued heavy rains diminish their numbers 

 most materially. A long-continued wet season, such as that of 1865, 

 almost sweeps the whole brood of them from off the face of the earth ; 

 but from the rapid rate at which they multiply there will always be 

 enough left for seed for another year. It may be laid down, not only 

 as a general, but universal rule, that this insect is never ruinously 

 destructive, except in those sections of country where there is con- 

 tinued hot dry weather ; and that if, in two adjoining districts, there 

 has been a dry summer in one and much wet weather during the sum- 

 mer season in the other, however plentiful and destructive the bug 

 may be in the first district, it will scarcely be heard of in the second. 

 Certainly this state of facts is not exactly that from which any rea- 

 sonable man would iufer, that the paucity of Chinch Bugs in a wet 



