INSECTS AFFECTING GRAINS, GRASSES, FORAGE 89 



Market gardeners frequently protect cabbage, tomato and 

 similar plants by knocking the bottoms out of tin cans or making 

 cylinders of building paper and placing these around the stems, 

 sinking them into the soil. Where cutworms assume the climbing 

 habit and attack fruit trees, distribute the bran mash or poisoned 

 clover liberally around the bases of the trees and put a band 

 of tanglefoot around the trunk of each tree, which will prevent 

 their ascent. Thorough cultivation of the orchard and neighbor- 

 ing land will also reduce their numbers. When they assume the 

 migratory habits of army worms, they may be controlled by the 

 same methods as described for them. Garden plants may some- 

 times be protected from cutworms, as well as flea beetles, by dip- 

 ping them in arsenate of lead, 3 pounds per barrel, when planting. 



The Chinch-bug * 



The adult Chinch-bug is about one-fifth inch long, with a 

 black body. Its white wings lie folded over each other on the 

 abdomen, and are marked by a small black triangle on their 

 outer margins, while the bases of the antenna and the legs are 

 red. The young bugs are yellowish or bright red marked with 

 brownish-black, becoming darker as they grow older. Along 

 the Atlantic coast and along the southern shores of the Great 

 Lakes north of a line from Pittsburg, Pa., to Toledo, Ohio, the 

 majority of the adults have short wings reaching but half over the 

 abdomen and are incapable of flight; but between the Alleghany 

 and Rocky Mountains the long-winged form greatly predominates. 

 It occurs also in restricted localities in Central America and 

 along the Pacific coast. The worst injury is to small grains 

 and corn in the Central and North Central States, but frequently 

 injury is done in the Eastern States, especially to timothy meadows 

 which have stood for several years. Though individually insig- 

 nificant, when assembled in countless myriads chinch-bugs have 

 doubtless been of greater injury to the farmers of the Mississippi 

 Valley than any other insect attacking grain crops, the total 

 damage from 1850 to 1909 being estimated at $350,000,000.f 



* Blissus leucopterus Say. Family Lygceidce. 



t See Circular 113, Bureau Entomology, U. S. Dept. Agr., F. M. Webster. 



