FIRST FIELD APPLICATIONS OF FUNGOUS ENEMIES. 45 
larvae will at first proceed but slowly, and only in extreme cases and ondei favor- 
able conditions can it be expected to proceed much more rapidly among adult 
In short, the only way that this fungoid disease seems capable of being employed in 
agriculture is by the establishment of some central propagating -ration to which 
farmers can apply and receive an abundant supply of infected bugs on short notice. 
15y this means they could take advantage of a rainy period of a week or ten days, 
and. if they can contrive by sowing plats of millet and Hungarian to mass the bugs 
in certain localities about their fields, they might accomplish something toward 
warding off an invasion. But the possibility of overcoming an invasion after it is 
fully under "way, as is almost sure to be the case during a dry season, it must be 
confessed is not very encouraging. My failure after repeated experiments to pro- 
duce this Entomophthora in the vicinity of Lafayette without the importation of 
germs is decidedly against the theory that might be advanced that the northeastern 
portion of the State was kept free of destructive invasions by reason of this die 
brought about by wet weather. There is as yet no reason to believe that the die 
has ever existed in that section of the State. 
The fungus with which I had been experimenting was determined for 
me as an Entomopthora by Dr. J. C. Arthur, and the probability is that 
it was E. aphid is, though it is possible that Sporotrichium was also 
present and remained unobserved by me. 
First field applications of fungous enemies of the chinch bug. — 1 have 
stated that the credit of first confining- healthy chinch bugs with those 
diseased and utilizing the thus infected individuals by transporting 
them to sections of the country supposedly free from the disease in 
order to create new areas of infection, belonged to Prof. F. H. Snow. 
During October, 1888, the year prior to that during which Professor 
Snow began his experiments, Prof. Otto Lugger, of Minnesota, collected 
a quantity of diseased chinch bugs at the experiment station at St. 
Anthony Park and distributed them to eighteen different localities in 
the southern part of the State where the pest was known to occur in 
destructive abundance. The diseased material was sent out in tin 
boxes by mail, and the contents of the boxes, on arrival at their desti- 
nation, were simply thrown in any Held where there was an abundance 
of chinch bugs. Later in the season the condition of affairs where 
these distributions had been made was such that "careful search in 
the majority of places failed to produce a single living specimen, while 
the traces of the disease were found everywhere." With a spirit ot 
caution and exactness in every way most commendable on the part of 
Professor Lugger, he says: " The disease spread so rapidly that even 
corn growing near wheal fields crowded with chinch bugs was entirely 
protected, and no bugs had entered it in all the places visited by myself. 
But I am by no means satisfied that the disease was really introduced 
in this manner. Is it not possible that the disease was already there, 
unknown to anyone, and that I had simply reintroduced its germs. 1 
The reason for this belief is based upon the fact that too large an area 
was infested by the disease — too large to be readily accounted for by 
the short time in which the atmospheric conditions were apparently 
in its favor.*' ' 
University of Minnesota Experiment Sta., Bull. t. Oct., 1888, pp. 10-41. 
