REPORTS OF OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS. 21 



a rule no trouble was experienced in securing the spread of the 

 from the infected to healthy bugs in the laboratory. Only twice dur- 

 ing the earlier portion of our experiments did the infection seem tem- 

 porarily to lose its virulence on account of lack of material. For a con- 

 siderable time after starting in it was almost impossible to obtain the 

 necessary live bugs from farmers living in infested portions of the 

 State. As long as this was the case but few lots of dead or infected 

 bugs were sent out from the station. Later, when bugs were received 

 by us every day we found no difficulty in securing fungus-covered 

 in sufficient quantities to supply all applicants with the disease to be 

 used in field experiments. Accompanying each small shipment of dis- 

 eased bugs were sent directions for their use, these instructions being 

 practically the same as those sent out by the Kansas station. 



Later, about the third week in September, a circular letter asking for 

 information was sent to each person who had received bugs from us. 

 This was for the purpose of obtaining facts relative to the success or 

 nonsuccess attending the experiments in the fields over the infested 

 area by the farmers who had undertaken this portion of the work. Up 

 to the present writing about one hundred replies have been received. Of 

 these about one-half are favorable, the other half, uncertain or negative. 



During the trials in the fields the weather was very unfavorable to 

 the growth of Sporotrichum, being very dry and hot; hence the sur- 

 prise that so large a proportion of the replies shoidd be favorable. 



Some of the correspondents reported the gathering of bugs in clus- 

 ters where they died without presenting any indications of the fungus 

 growth. These evidently died from the bacterial disease mentioned by 

 Prof. Snow. It also was present occasionally in our breeding cages in 

 the laboratory, where it did very effective work. It was especially 

 noticeable during the warmer and dryer part of the summer. 



