62 THE CHINCH BUG. 
will only be realized nearly a year afterwards, if at all. The average 
farmer, when smarting under a heavy loss, will often take such long- 
range precautions as to sow belts of flax, hemp, clover, or buckwheat 
around his wheat field once, but if the chinch bugs do not appear, and 
he sees the useless investment of time, labor, and seed, he will likely 
conclude the next year to take the risk and do nothing. For the pres- 
ent, then, we have no method whereby we can prevent the chinch bugs 
from taking up their abode in wheat fields or timothy meadows and 
raising their enormous families there, except to destroy the adults in 
their winter quarters. 
I once tried to destroy the young in a wheat field by spraying with 
kerosene emulsion the small areas of whitening grain that indicated 
where the pests were massed in greatest abundance. The result was 
uu satisfactory, and it is very doubtful if it is possible to apply this 
measure with any degree of success, and we are forced to the conclusion 
that, for the present at least, we shall be obliged to rely upon the 
measures previously given. It therefore becomes of the utmost impor- 
tance to clean up the roadsides, and along fences and patches of wood- 
land, as well as any other places likely to afford protection for the 
hibernating chinch bugs. I fully understand the obstacles in the way 
of carrying out this plan generally over any large area of country, and 
especially in sections where the rail fence predominates. But as the 
country gets older it will be found that it is not chinch bugs alone that 
seek these places in which to pass the winter, but myriads of the other 
insect foes of the farmer as well, and that careful attention to the con- 
dition of roadsides, lanes, hedgerows, and waste places about the 
farms, during the season when insects seek out these places wherein to 
pass the winter, will pay well for the time expended in that direction. 
It may come about that some phase of the street-cleaning reform may 
invade the country, and it is certain that if such were to occur it 
would, in time, save the country enough to go far toward reducing the 
expense of securing good roads. In fact, the term " good roads" ought 
to include the proper care of the roadsides, as well as the grading and 
macadamizing of the roadbed itself. 
There are at present so-called weed laws in many States, and though 
more or less of a dead letter in most cases, yet these laws are steps in 
the proper direction. The time when insect pests will be looked upon 
in the eye of the law as so many public nuisances, and the harboring 
of them a corresponding crime, may be a long way off, but as it grad- 
ually draws nearer to us we shall come to learn that, after all, it is the 
rational view to take and will go far toward solving not only the 
chinch bug problem but many others of a similar nature. So far as the 
chinch bug is concerned, when we burn over the waste lands and 
accumulated rubbish about our farms in autumn or winter, we are 
simply applying the same check that the dusky savage did when he 
lighted the prairie fires, though unwittingly and for an entirely differ- 
I 
