CHINCH -BUG. 147 



earth friable ; but that a shower of rain or heavy dews for a succession 

 of nights, 60 consolidated the earth that the insects could pass over. 



The other plan is much more effective, but also much more trouble- 

 some and expensive. It consists of a barricade of fence-boards, placed 

 end to end, and set edgewise into the ground, with the upper edge be- 

 smeared with some offensive substance, the one most commonly used 

 being coal tar. This method has been extensively resorted to, the past 

 season, in the central part of the State, and especially in the neighbor- 

 hood of the Bloomington gas works, where the coal tar is extensively 

 manufactured. I was informed by one of the proprietors of the gas- 

 works that nearly one hundred and fifty barrels of tar had been pur- 

 chased at that establishment for this purpose. I had an opportunity 

 of seeing this method put in practice, on a large scale, on the farm of 

 Mr. Joshua Sells, of Bloomington. At the time of my visit Mr. Sells 

 had discarded the boards as an unnecessary trouble and expense, and 

 had adopted the simpler and more expeditious plan of running a stream 

 of tar, from the spout of an old tea-kettle directly upon the ground, 

 along the exposed sides of his cornfields. He found that a gallon of 

 tar would extend about ten rods, so that a two-gallon kettle, twice filled, 

 would furnish a strip of tarred ground the whole length of a forty -rod 

 cornfield. The tar had to be renewed every other day, and oftener in 

 case of rain. The insects would crowd up to the line in such numbers, 

 that in many places they would pile up from half an inch to an inch 

 deep, and could be scraped up by the double handful.. But so long as 

 the tar was kept fresh not a bug would cross it. They were not pre- 

 vented from crossing by the adhesive nature of the tar, but by its re- 

 pulsiveness. The bugs would not touch it. They were destroyed by 

 conducting them into perpendicular holes, or by shoveling them in and 

 burying them. The usual price of coal tar at the gas-works is abou^ 

 two dollars a barrel. This is the most effective means yet resorted to 

 for intercepting the progress of these insects when in the act of moving 

 from one field to another ; but the trouble and expense of using it, es- 

 pecially at, a distance from the places where the tar is manufactured, 

 will probably prevent its ever being very generally practiced. The 

 .a;reat deficiency of all such methods, as a remedy for the chinch-bug, 

 is that, at best, they only protect that crop which is usually the least 

 damaged by them. 



