70 



money I have been enabled to largely increase the facilities of my 

 laboratory and to conduct on a rather extended scale practical experi-. 

 ments in the field. According to a provision in the act of appropria- 

 tion, I am required to make a monthly report to be printed in the official 

 State paper of Kansas, the Topela Daily Capital. From my last report, 

 made on July 15, I quote as follows : 



Siuce making the last report, June 15, the wheat has ripened and mostly heen 

 harvested. The chinch bugs at harvest time left the wheat fields and invaded the 

 fields of young corn. The experiments of 1889 and 1890 were carried on among bugs 

 in the corn fields, and the experiments of this year in wheat fields are thus new fea- 

 tures in the work. The results have been gratifying, but the reports from this year's 

 corn fields and the investigations of my field assistant, Mr. Hickey, show that the 

 massing of the bugs in the hills of corn offers more favorable conditions for the suc- 

 cessful workings of the disease than the usual conditions incident to the presence of 

 bugs in wheat. 



The hatching and appearance of the young bugs is a feature in the work added 

 since the last report. It is with satisfaction that I note the evident communicability 

 of the disease from old to young bugs by contact. The young bugs are as susceptible 

 to the infection as the old ones. 



The part of the State reporting bugs in the corn fields lies between 96° 30' and 98° 

 30' west longitude; or between a line drawn through Mai'shall, Pottawatomie, along 

 the eastern boundary of Geary, Morris, Chase, and along the eastern boundary of 

 Greenwood, Elk and Chautauqua Counties, and a line drawn along the eastern boun- 

 dary of Jewell, Mitchell, Lincoln, Ellsworth, Rice, Keuo, Kingman, and Harper Coun- 

 ties. This bug-infested belt extends clear across the State from north to south. 

 Scattering reports of the presence of the bugs are in from various eastern counties, 

 and from a few west of the 98° 30' line. 



Up to date (11 a. m., July 15) infected bugs have been sent out from my laboratory to 

 1,700 applicants. To several of these applicants second lots of infected bugs have been 

 sent, owing to failure to use the first lot for various reasons, and occasionally because 

 of failure to get good results from the first experiment. But as many, if not more, per- 

 sons have got dead bugs from fields wherein the bugs are dying because of infection 

 sent out from my laboratory as have received bugs directly from me. Each success- 

 ful field experiment has been the means of establishing a secondary distributing 

 center. It is evident that the experiment of killing chinch bugs by infection with 

 fungoid and bacterial disease is being given a trial on a large scale. The reports for 

 the past month (June 15 to July 15) have been gratifying, in that they show a good 

 percentage of success. However, reports are not made out as carefully as they should 

 be, and worse, many experimenters make no reports. I desire to have a report on 

 every lot of infected bugs sent out. 



Because of the difficulty of getting careful reports from the field, I sent out Mr. E. 

 C. Hickey, an intelligent university student doing special work in natural history, 

 as a field agent. Mr. Hickey's last trip was through Chautauqua, Harvey, Sumner, 

 Cowley, Butler, Greenwood, and Elk Counties, lasting from June 12 to July 6. He 

 visited seventy-two persons who had experimented with infected bugs, and found over 

 80 per cent of the seventy-two experiments successful. Mr. Hickey personally visited 

 the corn fields, and verified by careful observations the statements of the farmers. 



The laboratory facilities for sending out infected bugs have been largely increased, 

 and all demands can be promptly met. Application for infected bugs received in the 

 morning's mail are answered with bugs and directions on the noon outgoiug trains. 

 The work of scientific investigation in the laboratory is going on steadily and care- 

 fully. Inoculation experiments from pure cultures of Sporotrichum will be reported 

 on next month. A feature of the work unnoticed previously in this report is the 

 prevalence of Empusa, the fungus with which the first successful experiments were 



