22 THE SPEIXG GEAIX-APHIS OE 
issue of that publication for June 12. 1890, the following statement 
is made: 
The oat crop in the vicinity of St. Louis and probably extending a hundred miles 
in even' direction is being completely destroyed this season by an aphis, commonly 
called, we believe, the Texas louse. The oat fields look brown and bare, this little 
green insect sucking the juices and sapping the vitality of the plant. It increases 
with amazing rapidity, fully as rapidly, we judge, as the hop louse, swarming in even- 
direction and earning destruction in its path. The only thing they seem to feed 
upon is the oat. 
In the issue of the same publication for June 19, a week later, the 
following statement is made: 
The oat crop this season will be almost a total failure in St. Louis County. Hundreds 
of acres have been totally destroyed by the aphis, or plant louse, the depredations of 
which have been so widespread and effective that only a very small per cent of the 
crop will mature. Hundreds of farmers have despaired of the crop entirely, and have 
plowed up their oat fields and planted corn instead. 
The Weather Crop Bulletin of the Missouri State Board of Agri- 
culture for the week ending July 4. 1890, gives the following estimates 
of the oats crop throughout the State. Northeastern Missouri, 63 per 
cent; northwestern Missouri, 70 per cent; southeastern Missouri, 25 
per cent; central Missouri, 30 per cent; southwestern Missouri, 54 
per cent. As another writer describes it. the damage was most serious 
south of a line drawn diagonally across the State from the northeast 
to the southwest corner. 
The statement made in Colman's Rural "World to the effect that the 
oats crop within a radius of a hundred miles of St. Louis had been 
completely destroyed by the oats aphis or "Texas louse " would include 
within this radius territory nearly half way across southern Illinois. 
Mr. B. F. Johnson, of Champaign, 111., an agricultural writer, who 
appears to have traveled over the country quite extensively and 
observed the situation closely, writing to the Country Gentleman 
under date of June 24, sized up the situation as follows: 
For some weeks after it was seen above ground, the oat crop looked well and promised 
well, and this continued to the first or about that date in June. Since then oats have 
been going behind hand, with the threat now over them that all the crop has been 
more or less seriously reduced in yield and a considerable portion will be lost. In fact, 
the oat aphis, after ruining the oat crop south, has appeared on the black soil in force 
and nothing less than many and heavy rains will arrest his progress. As before reported, 
the dry weather in May favored a light growth of straw, as in 18S7, and hopes were 
entertained that long heads of sound grain would result. Such would have been the 
case had not the aphis appeared and sucked a part of the life-blood of the plants. 
The present appearance of a majority of oat fields — the acreage on the black soil coun- 
ties is an enormous one — is rather uneven as to growth, color, and measure of develop- 
ment, a part of which is owing to the greater or less fertility of the soil, but chiefly to 
the depredations of the aphis, that takes the weakest plants growing on the thinnest 
land. 
In the issue of August 14 of the same publication, Mr. John M. 
Staid, of Adams County, 111., states that in western Illinois the only 
