114 INJURIOUS IKSECTS 



for some considerable time after they hatch out, sucking 

 the sap from the roots. If, in the spring of the year, 

 you pull up a wheat plant in a field badly infested by this 

 insect, you will find hundreds of the eggs attached to the 

 roots; and at a somewhat later period the young larvae 

 may be found clustering upon the roots and looking like 

 so many moving little red atoms. The egg is so small 

 as to be scarcely visible to the naked eye, of an oval shape, 

 about four times as long as wide, of a pale-amber-white 



*- Fig. 80. SHORT-WINGED 



Fig. 79. CHINCH-BUG. CHINCH-BUG. 



color when first laid, but subsequently assuming a red- 

 dish color from the young larva showing through the 

 transparent shell. As the mother Chinch-bug has to 

 work her way under ground in the spring of the year, in 

 order to get at the roots upon which she proposes to lay 

 her eggs, it becomes evident at once, that the looser the 

 soil is at this time of the year the greater the facilities 

 which are offered for the operation. Hence the great ad- 

 vantage of plowing land for spring grain in the pre- 

 ceding autumn, or, if plowed in the spring, rolling it 

 repeatedly with a heavy roller after seeding. And the re- 

 mark is frequently made by farmers, that wheat harrowed 

 in upon old corn-ground, without any plowing at all, 

 is far less infested by Chinch-bug than wheat put in upon 



