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ion, and as there was not sufficient time — the legislature being al- 

 ready in session — for a campaign of explanation and argument, it 

 seemed best to lay the project aside for the time, and to bring it for- 

 ward, as I am now doing, as a sequel to a full description of the con- 

 ditions which it is proposed to remedy. 



Summary 



A destructive outbreak of the chinch-bug, the first beginnings of 

 which were seen in Illinois in the fall of 1909, continued with growing 

 intensity and gradually widening area until the spring of 1915, when 

 it suddenly collapsed. 



A careful computation of losses resulting, based upon a comparison 

 of crop yields and crop conditions in seventeen infested and seven- 

 teen uninfested counties, shows that the yield of corn, wheat, and oats 

 in these infested counties was diminished by chinch-bug infestation in 

 the year 1914 as follows: corn, $5,045,874; wheat, $1,356,039; oats, 

 $41,071 — a total of $6,442,984. Taking further account of losses in 

 six other counties in 1914,, and in the five other years of the period 

 of the outbreak, $13,000,000 is arrived at as the lowest reasonable esti- 

 mate of the total immediate loss in these three staple crops. Secondary 

 effects of the outbreak are illustrated by a comparison of statistics of 

 live-stock production in four infested and four uninfested counties, 

 showing that beef and dairy cattle of the four infested counties fell 

 off in numbers to a value of nearly half a million dollars, as a plain 

 consequence of the destruction of crops by chinch-bugs. 



An analysis of the weather and other conditions for several years 

 in the region where the chinch-bug outbreak began, points to a con- 

 clusion that the immediate cause of its beginning was unusually hot 

 midsummer weather, with no excessive rainfall, occurring in a region 

 in which the food plants occupied a relatively large area, with winter 

 wheat in especially large ratio. There was also convincing evidence 

 that the extension of the outbreak from the area occupied in 1910 was 

 in the nature of an overflow from the heavily infested territory, the 

 direction of which was governed in part by the cropping of the adja- 

 cent territory but in great measure also by the direction of the prevail- 

 ing winds at times when the insects were on the wing, especially in 

 spring when emerging from hibernation and in fall when in search of 

 winter quarters. These flights commonly occurring on warm sunny 

 days when the winds are from southerly and westerly directions, the 

 chinch-bugs were carried mainly to the north and east with a result- 

 ing extension of the area of infestation, year after year, in those di- 

 rections. The outbreak was brought to a conclusion in the spring and 

 early summer of 1915 by heavy beating and flooding rains coming at 

 times when the young bugs were hatching rapidly from the egg. 



The principal measures for the control of a chinch-bug outbreak 

 are the burning out of the insects in their winter quarters and their 



