39$ 



BUGS, INSECTS, ETC.— REMEDIES FOR. 



THE CHINCH BUG. — Few farmers in 

 this section of the country need an intro- 

 duction to this insect; but lest there be those 

 who are so blessed as not to know the 

 gentleman by sight, we annex his portrait. 

 He subsists by sucking 

 with his sharp-pointed 

 beak the grasses and 

 cereals, thereby caus- 

 ing them to shrink, 

 wilt and wither,andnot 

 by biting their sub- 

 . stance as many persons 

 suppose. Like the other 

 species of its suborder, 

 •it undergoes no very 

 sudden transforma- 



Fig 39.-CHINCH BuG. tions - Bom ■■ a little 

 Hair line underneath pale, yellow Six-legged 

 showing natural size, atom, scarcely visible 

 to the naked eye, and with a tinge of red 

 near the middle of the body, it goes 

 through four molts before acquiring wings. 

 It is bright red, with a pale band across 

 the middle of the body after the first; 

 somewhat darker, with the merest rudi- 

 ments of wing-pads after the second, and 

 quite brown, with distinct wing-pads, but 

 with the pale transverse band still visible, 

 after the third, in which it assumes the 

 pupa state, and from which, in the fourth 

 molt, it escapes as a winged bug. 



The chinch bug injures by suction, not 

 by biting. It winters in the perfect winged 

 state, mostly dormant, principally in the 

 old rubbish, such as dead leaves, corn- 

 shucks, corn-stalks, and under weeds and 

 prostrate fence rails and boards that gen- 

 erally surround grain fields ; also, in what- 

 ever other sheltered situation it can get in 

 adjacent woods; hence the importance of 

 fighting the pest in the winter time, either 

 by trapping it under boards laid for the 

 purpose, or by burning it with its afore- 

 mentioned shelter. Such burning will not 

 destroy all the dormant hosts, but will 

 practically render the species harmless, 

 especially where whole communities com- 

 bine to practice it. It issues from its win- 

 ter quarters during the first balmy days of 

 spring, when those females which were 

 impregnated the previous fall, and which 

 are most apt to survive the winter, com- 

 mence ovipositing at once, if suitable con- 

 ditions are at hand. Others take readily 

 to wing and scatter over our fields, at- 

 tracted by preference to grain growing in 



loose and dry soil, into which they pene- 

 trate to consign their eggs. The eggs are 

 deposited on the roots, and the young 

 bugs, which are red, remain under ground, 

 sucking the roots during the early part of 

 their lives, or until they are forced from 

 necessity to travel from one plant to 

 another. These spring-hatched bugs, con- 

 stituting the first brood, do not, as a rule, 

 acquire wings till after wheat is cut. It is, 

 therefore, during and just after wheat har- 

 vest, that they congregate and travel in 

 such immense swarms as to attract atten- 

 tion. In July, as these acquire wings, 

 they scatter over grass, late grain and 

 corn-fields, where they lay their eggs; but 

 the second brood, hatching from these 

 eggs, generally attracts less attention and 

 does less injury than did the first, because 

 of its more scattered nature and the greater 

 maturity and resisting power of the plants. 

 Anything that will prevent the mother 

 bug from getting at the roots of the grain, 

 will prevent the injury of her progeny. 

 Hence the importance in this connection 

 of fall plowing and using the roller upon 

 land that is loose and friable ; and hence, 

 if old corn ground is sufficiently clean, it 

 is a good plan to harrow in a crop of 

 small grain upon it without plowing at 

 all. The earlier also, that wheat gets well 

 started and matures, the less it will suffer; 

 because it may be harvested before the 

 bugs acquire their greatest growth and 

 power for harm. Hence, and from the 

 greater compactness of the ground, winter 

 wheat suffers less than spring wheat. 

 Heavy rains are destructive to the chinch 

 bug. Hence, if such occur in the fall, the 

 farmer may plant with little fear of injury 

 the following year, while if they occur in 

 May, he need suffer no anxiety, so far as 

 chinch bugs are concerned ; hence, also, 

 where irrigation is practicable, the pest 

 may at all times be overcome. It injures 

 no other plants than grasses and cereals. 

 In its migrations from field to field it may 

 be checked by a line of tar poured on the 

 ground, or by deep furrows or trenches, 

 but the tar must be kept soft and the sur- 

 face of the furrows friable and pulverized. 

 THE FLAT-HEADED APPLE-TREE 

 BORER. — This insect, owing to the en- 

 teebled condition of many fruit and shade 

 trees — a condition superinduced in part 

 by excessive drouth, in part by defolia- 

 tion, in the country ravaged by locusts — 



