50 



MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 



Food experiment The sole recorded exception to the general- 

 ization that the natural food of the chinch bug consists of species 

 of grasses only, is that reported by Mr. Lawrence Bruner,* from 

 Nebraska, according to whose observations one of the common 

 species of Polygonum (wild buckwheat) was found infested by the 

 bugs. 



A large lot of chinch bugs placed with a growing plant of 

 Poli/goniim dumetorum, September 5, 1888, seemed at first to try 

 to feed upon it, although close observation gave no positive evi- 

 dence that they actually did so. Later they paid little attention 

 to it, and in five days nearly all had died, chiefly in the bottom 

 of the bell glass, where they had spent most of their time. The 

 plant grew thriftily, and gave no evidence of attack. 



Early occurrence of the chinch hug in Illinois. — From W. T. 

 Shelby, Esq., police magistrate and notary public at Olney, Illinois, 

 born in Edwards county in 1820, I learned that the chinch bug de- 

 stroyed a field of his father's corn in 1828, on a place opened up 

 about 1816, seven miles north of Albion. The insects covered the 

 stalks so thickly that cattle did not like the fodder. This antedates 

 by 12 years the earliest previously recorded occurrence of the chinch 

 bug in Illinois,! and by three years its description by Say, who lived 

 then, and had lived for six years previously, at New Harmony, 

 Indiana, only about 25 miles from the locality above mentioned. 

 It is an interesting circumstance that Say's knowledge of this in- 

 sect was based on a single specimen obtained on the eastern shore 

 of Virginia^. • 



Effect of the chinch hug on grain and corn. — The fact seems 

 not to have been generally noticed that both small grain and corn 

 are frequently prostrated by chinch-bug attack, — the former much 

 as if infested by the Hessian fly. Corn evidently falls from lack 

 of "brace roots," whose development is arrested by the chinch 

 bugs which collect at the base of the stalks and drain the 

 roots as they put forth. The injury thus done is not measured 



*"Report on the Season's Observations in Nebraska," published in the Report of the U. S. De- 

 partment of Agriculture for 1887, p. 166. 



tSee Biblio;?raphical notes following this article. 



tSince writing the above I have recolvod from Mr. Shelby, Inconflrtnatlon of the above, the fol 

 lowing letter under date of November 80, 1888:- 



"Chlnch bugs appeared in Edwards county, seven miles north of Albion, in l8'-28, the year that 

 General Andrew Jackson was flrstelected President of the United States, and the Whigs, in doriBio 

 of the Democrats or .lackson men, dubbed them "Jackson bugs. ' I am not mistaken, as they 

 almost destroyed a field of corn of my father's, the fodder ft-om which the stock did not like to 

 •at." 



Mr. Shelly also writes, Dec. 12, lasS: "I have lately had a conversation with Mr. Elijah Nel- 

 son, who made a farm In 182(). two and a half miles west of where Olney now is. and he informs ra© 

 that chinch bugs appeared in the first crop of oats that was sown on that farm, as early a 

 182:^ and that his father told him that these were the same kind of bugs that they had in old 

 Virginia. .Mr. Nelson also tells me that In WA'-l they appeared in consldorablo numbers and^did som 

 damage to corn. Mr. Nelson Is a reliable old-time resident." 



