22 THE SPRING GEAIN-APHIS OE " GREEN BUG." 



issue of that publication for June 12, 1890, the following statement 



is made: 



The oat crop in the vicinity of St. Louis and probably extending a hundred miles 

 in every direction is being completely destroyed this season by an aphis, commonly 

 called, we believe, the Texas louse. The oat fields look brown and bare, this little 

 green insect sucking the juices and sapping the vitality of the plant. It increases 

 with amazing rapidity, fully as rapidly, we judge, as the hop louse, swarming in every 

 direction and carrying destruction in its path. The only thing they seem to feed 

 upon is the oat. 



In the issue of the same publication for June 19, a week later, the 



following statement is made : 



The oat crop this season will be almost a total failure in St. Louis County. Hundreds 

 of acres have been totally destroyed by the aphis, or plant louse, the depredations of 

 which have been so widespread and effective that only a very small per cent of the 

 crop will mature. Hundreds of farmers have despaired of the crop entirely, and have 

 plowed up their oat fields and planted corn instead. 



The Weather Crop Bulletin of the Missouri State Board of Agri- 

 culture for the week ending July 4, 1890, gives the following estimates 

 of the oats crop throughout the State. Northeastern Missouri, 63 per 

 cent; northwestern Missouri, 70 per cent; southeastern Missouri, 25 

 per cent; central Missouri, 30 per cent; southwestern Missouri, 54 

 per cent. As another writer describes it, the damage was most serious 

 south of a line drawn diagonally across the State from the northeast 

 to the southwest corner. 



The statement made in Colman's Kural World to the effect that the 

 oats crop within a radius of a hundred miles of St. Louis had been 

 completely destroyed by the oats aphis or "Texas louse" would include 

 within this radius territory nearly half way across southern Illinois. 

 Mr. B. F. Johnson, of Champaign, 111., an agricultural writer, who 

 appears to have traveled over the country quite extensively and 

 observed the situation closely, writing to the Country Gentleman 

 under date of June 24, sized up the situation as follows: 



For some weeks after it was seen above ground, the oat crop looked well and promised 

 well, and this continued to the first or about that date in June. Since then oats have 

 been going behind hand, with the threat now over them that all the crop has been 

 more or less seriously reduced in yield and a considerable portion will be lost. In fact, 

 the oat aphis, after ruining the oat crop south, has appeared on the black soil in force 

 and nothing less than many and heavy rains will arrest his progress. As before reported , 

 the dry weather in May favored a light growth of straw, as in 1887, and hopes were 

 entertained that long heads of sound grain would result. Such would have been the 

 case had not the aphis appeared and sucked a part of the life-blood of the plants. 

 The present appearance of a majority of oat fields — the acreage on the black soil coun- 

 ties is an enormous one — is rather uneven as to growth, color, and measure of develop- 

 ment, a part of which is owing to the greater or less fertility of the soil, but chiefly to 

 the depredations of the aphis, that takes the weakest plants growing on the thinnest 

 land. 



In the issue of August 14 of the same publication, Mr. John M. 

 Stahl, of Adams County, 111., states that in western Illinois the only 



