﻿OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 31 



" In fact, the whole history of the Chinch Bug, from the very earli- 

 est records which we have of it, points unmistakably to the fact that a 

 wet season affects it injuriously, and often almost annihilates it. In 

 Carolina and Virginia, during the dry years Avhich preceded 1840, it 

 had become so numerous that the total destruction of the crops was 

 threatened; but fortunately, unlike Hi predecessors, the Summer of 

 18J0 was quite wet, and the ravages of the bug were at once arrested. 

 In Illinois and in this State it had increased to an alarming extent 

 during the latter part of the last rebellion; but the excessive wet 

 Summer of 1865 swept them to such an extent that it was difficult to 

 find any in the Fall of that year. So it was again in 1869-70, and so 

 it always has been and doubtless will be." 



It will be remembered that in some parts of the State we had 

 several generous rains in July which were most grateful after the 

 preceeding excessively dry weather. No one who was not in and 

 about the cornfields can have any idea of the almost magic eff'ect of 

 those rains in destroying the chinch bugs. Of the vast swarms that 

 a few weeks before, had blackened and deadened the rows of corn 

 adjacent to harvested wheatfields, fully two-thirds in many localities 

 were dead and rotting, whether above the ground between the blades, 

 or below ground upon the roots; and these dead and drowned com- 

 prised bugs of all ages, and especially the larvos and pupae. 



DIRECT REMEDIES AGAINST THE CHINCH BUG. 



When a field of wheat or barley or rye, is once overrun b}^ chinch 

 bugs, man is, in the majority of cases, powerless before the unsavory 

 host, and his only hope is in timely rains. The great majority of 

 noxious insects may be controlled even at the last hour, but a few — 

 and among them is the Chinch Bug — defy our efforts when once they are 

 in full force upon us. There are several applications that will kill the 

 insect when brought in contact with it, and I have known a few rowe 

 of corn to be saved by the copious use of simple hot water, but the 

 application of all such direct remedies becomes impracticable on the 

 scale in which they are needed in the grain fields of the West. Irri- 

 gation, where it can be be applied — and it can be in much of the ter- 

 ritory in the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains, where the insect com- 

 mits sad havoc ; and with a little effort, in many regions in the heart 

 of the Mississippi Valley — is the only really available, practicable 

 remedy, after the bugs have commenced multiplying in the spring. 

 I wish to lay particular stress on this matter of irrigation^ believing 

 as I do, that it is an effectual antidote against this pest, and that by 

 overflowing a grain field for a couple of days, or by saturating the 

 ground for as many more in the month of May, we may effectually pre- 



