sod has been broken up in fall the bill-bugs will do but little damage 
the following spring, and that the second planting, whenever the 
time of plowing, will be little if at all attacked. 
Early fall-plowing of grass-lands would consequently seem, in 
the present state of our knowledge, to diminish greatly, if not com- 
pletely to prevent, injury to corn by bill-bugs the following year; a 
statement which must be applied to blue-grass pastures as well as 
to timothy meadows, since the bill-bug most abundant in timothy, 
Sphenophorus parvulus, has also been found destructive in blue- 
grass lawns. (See Bull. 22, U. S. Dept. Agr., Div. Ent., p. 99.) 
As a check to injury to timothy meadows I see nothing better 
than to avoid keeping the same ground in timothy for more than two 
years at a time Where the pest becomes so common and destructive 
as in the Dalbey neighborhood, it would seem wise to substitute 
clover for timothy, so far as practicable, for a considerable term of 
years. 
Summary. 
In a forty-acre field of corn in Christian county, injury by bill- 
bugs was found to have affected about 29 per cent, of the hills, di- 
minishing the number of stalks in such hills by 14 per cent, and the 
number of ears by 40 per cent., and seriously injuring 26 per cent, 
more of the ears. It also caused about a third of the stalks in the 
injured hills to fall to the ground, and weakened about a fifth of 
them additional. The total loss in the field was estimated at 18 per 
cent, of the crop, or nearly nine bushels to the acre. 
Comparison of this with other fields shows that the injury was 
due to planting corn after timothy plowed in spring, and that 
most of it could have been prevented by early fall-plowing of the 
timothy sod. 
