OF THE FARM AND GARDEN. 115 



land that has been plowed. There is another fact 

 which has been repeatedly noticed by practical men. 

 This insect cannot live and thrive and multiply in land 

 that is sopping with water, and it generally commences 

 its operations in early spring upon those particular parts 

 of every field where the soil is the loosest and the driest. 



There is nothing which experience has more firmly es- 

 tablished in connection with this pest, than that heavy 

 rains and wet seasons are destructive of it. I have wit- 

 nessed the almost magical effect of a heavy and pro- 

 longed rain in a cornfield that was suffering badly. 

 Warm, moist, or open winters are equally prejudicial to it. 



The female occupies about three weeks in depositing 

 her eggs, and, according to Dr. Shimer's estimate, she de- 

 posits about five hundred. The egg requires about two 

 weeks to hatch, and the bug becomes full grown and ac- 

 quires its wings in from forty to fifty days after hatching. 



DESTRUCTIVE POWERS OF THE CHINCH-BUG. 



Few persons in the more Northern States can form a 

 just conception of the prodigious numbers and redoubt- 

 able armies in which this insect is sometimes seen in the 

 South and South-western States, marching from one field 

 to another. The following extracts from cotemporane- 

 ous writers I have no doubt are substantially correct, and 

 give a clear and graphic statement of the ravages of the 

 Chinch-bug: 



There never was a better show for wheat and bar- 

 ley than we had here, the tenth of June, and no more 

 paltry crop has been harvested since we were a town. 

 Many farmers did not get their seed. In passing by a 

 field of barley where the Chinch-bugs had been at work 

 for a week, I found them moving in solid column across 

 the road to a com field on the opposite side, in such 



