﻿58 SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT 



Crawford County. 



3 — There has been no effort, on\y to sow early ; this has saved the wheat crop this 

 year. 1 have not seen one of your reports in the county. — j. a. There has been no 

 sj'stematic effort made to overcome its injuries to my knowledge. — m. o. t. 



4 — Wheat, none; oats, one-half ; corn and gra«s the same. — j a. I have endeav- 

 ored by conversation v/ith farmers and others in diflVrent parts of the county to obtain 

 something near the amount of damng ' done "by the Chinch Bug this year, but ani 

 unable to arrive at anything definite ; suffice it to say it is thousands of dollars. * - '^ 

 — M. o. T. 



Dade County. 



3 — No. Individual efforts, such as plowing out a trench and dragging a log in it, or 

 burning trash in it. Keeping a strip ot fallow land between infested cr^ops and those 

 not infested, also planting objectionable crops, such as castor beans, between wheat 

 and corn, has been tried, but with no very encouraging success. Your Second Annual' 

 Report is unknown to the farmers of this neighborhood. I have sousjht for it in vain. — 

 As to my own experience, I find that enouirh chinch bugs do not winter over on my 

 place (two miles from timber) to seed it in the Sprino, But every Spring, soon after 

 the earliest corn is up, they come in on the wing before the wind, and take possession 

 of. and lay their eggs on, every green thing that suits their purpose. At the same 

 time that the eggs hatched out in the wheat, they also hatched out in the early planted 

 corn, while there were none in the corn and Hungarian planted and sown after the 

 Spring invasion, until they were driven out of the wheat and oats by the harvesters. In 

 these Spring migrations they always come from the same direction — southwest before 

 a southwest wind, and apparently from a strip of timber on Horse creek, about three 

 miles away. According to this, trenching, etc., will do very well for late crops, but is 

 of no use for those crops that are up before the Spring migration, which occurred last 

 Spring, as nearly as I can recollect, the first week in May, and all over the county at 

 the same time. I believe that if we can get a good game law, absolutely prohibiting^ 

 the trapping and netting of quails and prairie chickens, and then ninke the farmers see 

 that it is to their interest to have it enforced, we will be injured no more by the Chinch 



Bug. — R. A. W. 



Dallas County. 



3— One of the most successful means employed is the following: As soon as yoiv 

 cut a piece of wheat or oats you will find they begin to miorate the same day to the 

 adjoining crop, then you have your base of operation. Either haul straw, litter or 

 sometliing that will afford them shade, and about 2 or 3 o'clock p. m. you can, by burn- 

 ing the straw, burn millions of them. * * * — m. l. r. 



4 — Enormously ; past my calculation. Have never seen a copy of your Second Ke- 

 port. Such documents are generally sent to lawyers, politicians, officers and professional 

 men, who never read, much less make practical use of the valuable knowledge con- 

 tained in them. I have often seen piles of such valuable books lay in our postofScefor 

 months addressed to sucii persons. * * * — G. a. h. I am sure I will not make an 

 overestimate of damage by the bug in placing it at $50,000.— m. l. r. 



Daviess County. 

 3— During the last Summer, 1874, as soon as the wheat straw became dry the 

 chinch bugs marched out of the wheat and into the corn; they went and blackened 

 every stalk of corn for fifteen rows deep and next to the wheat. When I discovered 

 this I took a hirge kettle and placed it near the Chinch Bug operations, filled it with 

 water and went to work on them like some of our good house wives wage war ou 

 another insect that carries the same kind of odor. I thus cooked them by the millions. 

 This ended their work of destruction in the field ; the scalding did not destroy the 



