56 
ive than other slow combustibles. The use of smoke will be effectual 
in proportion as farmers combine together and produce it simultane- 
ously over extended areas. 
DIVERSIFIED AGRICULTURE. 
There is nothing surer than that the destitution in western Missouri 
and eastern Kansas, in 1874-'75, was fully as much owing to the previ- 
ous ravages of the Chinch Bug as to those of this locust. The Chinch 
Bug is an annual and increasing trouble; the locust only a periodical 
one. Now, the regions indicated are, agriculturally, the richest in those 
two states, and, for that matter, can scarcely be surpassed in the entire 
country. Consisting of high, rolling prairie, interspersed, as a rule, 
with an abundance of good timber, this area produces a very large 
amount of corn and stock. Of cultivated crops, corn is the staple, and, 
with a most generous soil, it has become the fashion to plant and culti- 
vate little else, year after year, on the same ground. The corn-fields 
alternate more or less with pastures, and there is just enough small 
grain to breed and nourish the first brood of chinch-bugs which pass into 
the corn at harvest time and which scatter over the country by breed- 
ing and harboring in the corn-fields. Not to mention the different means 
to be employed in counteracting the ravages of this insect, a diversified 
agriculture is undoubtedly one of the most effectual. It must necessa- 
rily follow that the more extensively any given crop is cultivated to the 
exclusion of other crops the more will the peculiar insects which depre- 
date upon it become unduly and injuriously abundant.. The chinch- 
bug is confined in its depredations to the grasses and cereals. Alternate 
your timothy, wheat, barley, corn, etc., upon which it flourishes, with 
any of the numerous crops on which it can not flourish, and you very 
materially affect its power for harm. A crop of corn or wheat grown 
on a piece of land entirely free from chinch-bugs will not suffer to the 
same extent as a crop grown on land where the insects have been breed- 
ing and harboring. This fact is becoming partially recognized, and 
already hemp, flax, and castor-beans are to some extent cultivated in 
the States mentioned. But there are many other valuable roots and 
forage plants that may yet be introduced and grown as field crops. 
Governor Pillsbury, of Minnesota, has a few pertinent remarks on this 
subject in one of his annual messages. He says : 
In my former messages I took occasion to urge upon farmers a greater diversification 
of their crops. The present tendency, I fear, is toward an aggravation rather than a 
correction of the evil referred to. Stimulated hy recent heavy crops, land hunters 
have a passion for immense tracts and great wheat-farms. While the cultivation of 
our idle lands is always desirable, this pursuit of a single branch of farming is to be 
lamented. And I fear that the expectations of great profits of many inexperienced 
persons who are drawn into the movement by excitement is doomed to disappoint- 
ment. A wiser coarse is to look to many sources of profit rather than to one. There 
is no better country than ours for the raising of stock. Our wool, beef, butter, aud 
cheese are unsurpassed. With the production of these > wheat-growing altern,atea 
