﻿24 SEVENTH ANNUAL KEPORT 



not multiply as much on a sandy as on a clayey loam, for the reason 

 that it cannot move about as readily in such a soil; and the immunity 

 of grain immediately along the Missouri river in Cole county, attested 

 by Mr. N. DeWyl and others, is, I think, more due to the sandy nature 

 of the soil, compared to that farther back of the river, than to the 

 greater moisture in the immediate vicinity of the river. 



DESTRUCTIVE TOWERS OF THE CHINCH BUG. 



Though but one of the many insect pests that afflict the farmer, 

 it is, perhaps, all things considered, the most grievous. Few persons 

 who have not paid especial attention to the subject have any just 

 conception of the amount of damage the Chinch Bug sometimes 

 inflicts, and many will be surprised to learn that, setting aside the 

 injury done to corn, the loss which the little scamp occasioned to the 

 small grains in the Northwestern States in 1871, amounted to upwards 

 of thirty million dollars, at the very lowest estimates — as proved by 

 careful computations made by Dr. LeBaron in his Second Annual 

 Report as State Entomologist of Illinois. The loss in IST-l may safely 

 be put down at double that sum. Indeed, not even the migratory 

 locusts that, from time to time, spread devastation over the western 

 country can be compared in destructiveness to this little bug; for his 

 devastations, though not so general, are more incessant, and cover a 

 more thickly settled range of country. Those who have not seen the 

 ground alive and red with its young, or the plants black with the dark 

 bodies of the more mature individuals; those who have not seen the 

 stout cornstalk bow and wilt in a few hours from the suction of their 

 congregated beaks, or a wheat field in two or three days rendered un- 

 fit for the reaper; those who have never seen the insect marching in 

 solid phalanx from field to field, or absolutely filling the air for miles 

 — can form no adequate conception of its destrut-tive powers! It is 

 no wonder, therefore, that Kirby and Spence, more than half a cen- 

 tury ago, exclaimed, in speaking of this "chintz-bug fly," that "it 

 seems very difficult to conceive how an insect that lives by suction, 

 and has no mandibles, could destroy these plants so totally." * 



ITS INJURIES IN 1874. 



Though we have had previous bad Chinch Bug years, of which the 

 more recent ones of 1864, 1868 and 1871 may be mentioned, yet I 

 doubt whether in any one previous year it has occasioned such wide- 

 spread destruction. Its greatest injury is usually confined to the 

 spring wheat belt, which includes, roughly speaking. South and Cen- 

 tral Illinois, North and Central Missouri, South Nebraska and Kansas ; 



♦Introduction to Entomology, London, 1828, Vol. I, p. 171. 



