CEREAL PESTS INSECTS 477 



South Carolina from October 25 to November 15; in 

 extreme southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma from 

 October 10 to October 20 ; in Maryland from October 1 

 to October 15, according to altitude. 



Burning the stubble, the destruction of volunteer wheat, 

 and crop rotations are other methods of prevention 

 that are most important and can be made effective where 

 farmers can be induced to cooperate. At the Kansas 

 Experiment Station, Headlee and Parker (1913, pp. 119- 

 121) found that plowing the infested stubble under deeply 

 destroyed the fly much more thoroughly than the method 

 of burning it, while there was the further advantage of 

 the addition of organic matter to the soil. Naturally 

 wheat should not be sown on stubble ground without 

 plowing. 



523. The chinch bug (Blissus leucopterus, Say). In 

 the middle Great Plains and eastward to Ohio and north- 

 ward to Minnesota the worst insect pest of cereal crops 

 is the chinch bug. It is distributed in less damaging 

 numbers in other parts of eastern North America from 

 Nova Scotia and Manitoba to the Gulf of Mexico and 

 along the Pacific Coast. The chinch bug is native in 

 this country, and attacks the small cereals, grasses, and 

 corn, but not the legumes. It does its greatest damage 

 periodically, and especially during a period of two or 

 three dry years. It is thought that the damage to all 

 cereals, including corn, in Kansas alone, may reach two 

 million dollars in a single year, while occasionally the 

 damage to these crops throughout the entire country 

 probably reaches 50 or 60 million dollars. The loss from 

 chinch bugs in Missouri was several million dollars in 

 1913. The chinch bug, both as young and adult, works 

 at the base of the cereal plant, and does its damage by 



