﻿28 SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT 



stated by Dr. Harris and Dr. Fitch to be onli'' single-brooded in Massa- 

 chusetts and New York, the insect spinning up in September or 

 October, passing the winter in the pupa state, and coming out in the 

 winged form in the following June. But Dr. Harris — no doubt on the 

 authority of Abbott — states that 'in Georgia this insect breeds twice 

 a year;'* and 1 have proved that it does so breed in Missouri." 



"It is these two peculiarities in the habits of the Chinch Bug, 

 namely, first, its continuing to take food from the day of its birth to 

 the day of its death, and, secondly, its being either two-brooded or 

 many-brooded, that renders it so destructive and so difficult to com- 

 bat. Such as survive the autumn, when the plants on the sap of 

 which they feed are mostly dried up so as to afford them little or no 

 nourishment, pass the winter in the usual torpid state, and always in 

 the perfect or winged form, under dead leaves, under sticks of wood, 

 under fiat stones, in moss, in bunches of old dead grass or weeds or 

 straw, and often in cornstalks and cornshucks. 



"In the winter, all kinds of insect-devouring animals, such as 

 birds, shrew mice, etc., are hard put to it for food, and have to search 

 every hole and corner for their appropriate prey. But no matter how 

 closely they may thin out the chinch bugs, or how generally those 

 insects may have been starved out by the autumnal droughts, there 

 will always be a few left for seed next year. Suppose that there are 

 only 2,000 chinch bugs remaining in the spring in a certain field, and 

 that each female of the 2,000, as vegetation starts, raises a family of 

 only 200, which is a low calculation. Then — allowing the sexes to be 

 equal in number, whsreas in reality the females are always far more 

 numerous than the males — the first or spring brood will consist of 

 200,000, of which number 100,000 will be females. Here, if the species 

 were single-brooded, the process would stop for the current year ; and 

 200,000 chinch bugs in one field would be thought nothing of by the 

 Western farmer. But the species is not single-brooded, and the pro- 

 cess does NOT stop here. Each successive brood increases in numbers 

 in geometrical progression, unless there be something to check their 

 increase, until the second brood amounts to twenty millions, and the 

 third brood to two thousand millions. We may form some idea of the 

 meaning of two thousand millions of chinch bugs when it is stated 

 that that number of them, placed in a straight line head and tail 

 together, would just about reach from the surface of the earth to its 

 central point — a distance of four thousand miles." 



WIIKKE THE EGGS ARE LAID. 



The Chinch Bug deposits its eggs occasionally above ground on 



* Injurious Insects, p. 431. 



