CORN PESTS AND DISEASES 



273 



or blade of grass, forms a bridge over the line. In 

 case the bugs do get upon the young corn they can 

 be destroyed by spraying with a ten to twelve per cent 

 solution of kerosene emulsion. It should be applied 

 with a good spray pump. About one-quarter to half 

 a pint of emulsion will be sufficient for each hill. In 

 1895 the writer made a practical demonstration of 

 these methods on the farm of William Quade near 

 Edgewood, Illinois. A forty-acre field of corn sur- 

 rounded on three sides with wheat and oats was saved. 

 In one day it was estimated that the furrows contained 

 about twelve bushels of dead chinch bugs. 



The Corn Root Aphis — Usually associated with 

 ants in hills of corn, farmers will often find minute, 

 soft, thick-bodied, six-legged insects, mostly without 

 wings. They are always sluggish. When exposed 

 they may show little or no signs of disturbance, but 

 if shaken off the roots into which their lance-like beaks 

 are inserted, they will probably crawl slowly and clum- 

 sily about. Ants which have nested in the hill will 

 seize these little insects in their jaws and hurry away 

 with them into concealment. No insect affecting corn 

 is more deserving of the attention of farmers than the 

 corn root aphis or louse. It ranks as a corn pest with 

 the chinch bug and army worm. See Figs 74 and 85. 



The corn root louse takes its food through a stiff 

 beak, which it thrusts into the tissues of the plant 

 it feeds upon. It thus produces no external injury, 

 nor any local internal effect discoverable by ordinary 

 methods of observation. Indications of injury by this 

 insect are consequently all of a general character, 

 affecting the entire plant, and do not materially differ 

 from those caused by severe drouth, except in the fact 

 that they are likely to be unequal in different parts 

 of the same field in a way to indicate no connection 

 with the amount of retained moisture in the soil. The 



