119 



"We have succeeded in the past year in inducing very many 

 farmers to protect their corn against direct invasion from infested 

 wheat-fields (where corn and wheat lie side by side), by placing and 

 maintaining one of the trap and barrier lines between the corn and 

 the wheat at harvest-time, with the result that, in thirteen central 

 Illinois counties, corn worth $804,000* was saved at an expense of 

 $40,500 to the farmers for materials and labor, and of $1933 to the 

 State. The average farmer, however, will not entirely surround an 

 infested wheat-field in a way to capture all its insect inhabitants, es- 

 pecially for the reason that this would be of no appreciable benefit to 

 himself unless his neighbors generally do the same; and if he has no 

 corn or oats beside his wheat, he will do nothing at all. The conse- 

 quence is that the bugs move out of the infested Avheat in at least 

 three directions, even if they are headed off and trapped in one ; and 

 those escaping presently get their full growth, scatter everywhere on 

 the wing, infest the corn and other crops of the whole country-side, 

 and there feed and lay their eggs almost as if nothing at all had been 

 done. Persons able and ready to destroy all the bugs of the first gen- 

 eration bred in their own fields, will not do so when they know that 

 their neighbors are breeding vast hordes of them and allowing them 

 to escape to destroy everything a little later. 



% * We are thus compelled to seek means of securing general action 

 such as will give every person concerned a reasonable assurance that 

 all others will do their duty by the community. To this end it has 

 been suggested that the legislature be asked to pass a law making it 

 the duty of every person having a field of small grain dangerously 

 infested by chinch-bugs to take the measures necessary to prevent 

 their escape to the injury of the property of others, with, a proviso 

 that this lair shall take effect only when and where a proclamation by 

 the Governor of the State may direct. The chinch-bug is but one of 

 several insect pests of the farm whose control and destruction present 

 the same practical problem, and any such law should be drawn in 

 terms, consequently, to apply to all similar cases. The principle in- 

 volved, I may say, is already well recognized in our various state 

 quarantine laws, and especially in our state law intended to operate 

 against the spread of the San Jose scale and other dangerous and 

 destructive pests of horticulture. 



"I should be much pleased to have your opinion of the desirability 

 of such legislation at the present time, and as full an expression of 

 your views upon the situation generally as you may be willing to 

 give." 



Sixteen replies to these letters were received, ten favorable to the 

 proposed legislation, three favorable to the principle but doubtful of 

 its practicability, and three simply uncertain or non-committal. As 

 only a third of those addressed expressed a positively favorable opin- 



*This should have been $715,000. 



