Fifth Annual Report. 13 
Il.—THE CHINCH-BUG AND ITS DISEASES. 
We believe it will be of service to our readers to preface the 
report of the work of the past year with a brief discussion of 
the life history of the chinch-bug and the fungus diseases which 
are known to destroy it. What we have to say will be in part 
a repetition of some things already published by us, but since 
the larger number of those who receive the report this year 
may not be acquainted with our previous reports the repetition 
is warranted. 
1.—_LIFE HISTORY OF THE CHINCH-BUG. 
The appearance of the adult chinch-bug is already too well 
known to our readers to require a description. 
Adult chinch-bugs pass the winter under the shelter of leaves, 
sticks, stones, clods, corn-stalks, roots of grasses, etc., and are 
able to live through a temperature below freezing. They have 
been found to survive after having been frozen up solidly in ice. 
They begin their depredations on the roots of small grains as 
soon as the weather opens up in the spring. Here the female 
soon commences to deposit her eggs, continuing the operation 
over a period of 20 days, and depositing about 300 eggs in all. 
The egg is only about 53, of an inch long and about one-fifth 
as wide, and is easily overlooked by the naked eye. The egg is 
at first creamy white, but changes to reddish as the embryo de- 
velops. Theeggs hatch out in about two weeks, and the young 
larvee, begin to feed at the roots or upon the stalks of the small 
grain almost immediately. The chinch-bug arrives at maturity 
in from five to seven weeks, and in this interval it sheds its skin 
four times. After hatching the bug is of a pale reddish color, 
and grows darker after each successive moult. Up to the time 
of the third moult the bug is said to be in the larval stage ; after 
the third moult it is in the pupal stage, and after the fourth 
moult it is in the imago or mature stage. The chinch-bug does 
not have wings until the last or fourth moult. When the mature 
bug emerges from its last moult it is of a pale pink color, but in 
a few hours it changes to a blackish color. The same thing is 
observed when the larva sheds its skin for the third time and 
passes into the pupa state. The pink, freshly-moulted bugs 
have often been mistaken by farmers for diseased bugs. 
