89 



percent in hay and pasture land. It would have been difficult indeed 

 to plan a cropping of these counties better calculated to breed and 

 nourish the chinch-bug during a time favorable to its rapid increase. 

 With an abundance of wheat for the first generation and of corn for 

 the second, with oats enough to ease the way from the one crop to the 

 other after the wheat harvest, with a large area in the permanent 

 grasses available at all times as an emergency food when the more 

 succulent cereals were wanting, and with weather favorable to a large 

 production of eggs and a successful hatching and rapid growth of the 

 young; it was no miracle that brought the chinch-bugs out in un- 

 manageable numbers. 



In the nine uninfested counties, on the other hand, with an area 

 of two and three quarters millions of acres, we see in the smaller per- 

 centage of the chinch-bug crops (36.2 percent here as against 50 

 percent in the other counties) and especially in a ratio of winter wheat 

 only about one twelfth that of the infested counties (2.3 percent as 

 against 27.8 percent) , at least a partial explanation of the freedom of 

 these counties from chinch-bug attack. 



It was rather unfortunate for southern Illinois that wheat was a 

 peculiarly tempting crop at the time when the agriculture of the re- 

 gion was threatened with ruin by an insect which finds in an abund- 

 ance of wheat its most favorable food. The price of wheat in 1909 led 

 to an increased acreage in that crop in 1910, even in the infested and 

 endangered counties. In our nine infested counties the area in wheat 

 rose from 27.8 percent in 1909 to 31 percent in 1910, the other crop 

 areas being diminished a little or remaining virtually unchanged. In 

 the nine uninfested counties the change was still greater, from 2.3 

 percent in wheat in 1909 to 7.3 percent in 1910, oats also coming up 

 here from 8.9 percent to 12.4 percent, the corn and forage grasses 

 falling off proportionally. The total acreage of the chinch-bug crops 

 increased in these uninfested counties from 36.2 percent (1909) to 42 

 percent (1910). The contrast in crops between these groups of coun- 

 ties continued marked in 1910, however, in respect to the area in 

 wheat, which was more than four times as large in the infested coun- 

 ties as it was in the uninfested. 



Crop Areas, 1910, Infested Counties 



Counties 



Bond 



Clinton 

 Fayette . . . 

 Madison 

 Marion . . . 



Perry 



Randolph 

 St. Clair . . 

 Washington 



Wheat 



Oats 



19,016 

 20,165 

 32,914 

 65,100 

 901 

 31,117 

 54,384 

 60,985 

 45,673 



10,379 



10,290 

 8,504 

 6,234 

 4,737 



11,686 

 1,624 

 2,805 



21,793 



Corn 



24,462 

 14,870 

 33,900 

 67,767 

 28,928 

 17,959 

 24,530 

 38,477 

 32.769 



Forage 

 46,716 



15,583 

 76,858 

 70,228 

 49,968 

 14,485 

 30,516 

 40,047 

 26,148 



Totals 330,255 78,052 



283,662 



370.549 



