HISTOKICAL SUMMARY OF DISEASES. 11 
Dr. Lugger, who first attempted to disseminate the disease by- 
means of distributing diseased bugs in 1888, adopted the plan again 
in 1895. In the First Annual Report of the State Entomologist of 
the State Experiment Station of Minnesota for the year 1895, he 
says: 
Judging from the large number of letters, the writers were well pleased with 
the results of spreading spores among chinch bugs. * * * Of course it 
would be folly to claim that the disease was always spread by the introduction 
of such spores, and it is also possible that it would appear simply because the 
climatic conditions were in its favor. Whatever may be the reasons for its 
appearance, so many farmers believe in the effectiveness of introducing spores 
causing the disease that the State can well afford to continue this work. 
However, the practice has been abandoned in Minnesota. Prof. 
F. L. Washburn, State entomologist, in Bulletin No. 77, Agricultural 
Experiment Station, 1902, says: 
We do not know of any profitable means of killing the chinch bugs in the 
grain at present. In this connection we will say that the sending out of dis- 
eased chinch bugs has been abandoned, it having been found that the results 
were not sufficiently practical. 
Dr. S. A. Forbes, who first definitely recognized the white fungus 
in 1887, began an extensive series of experiments with this and also 
the gray fungus, which lasted till 1896. The results of his investi- 
gations were not such as to lead him to recommend the use of the 
fungous diseases as a means of combating chinch bugs, although he 
was not ready to declare the method a failure. By isolating bugs 
sent in by farmers, he found that the disease developed among a large 
percentage of them without their being inoculated, and thus was led 
to conclude that the disease was very generally distributed naturally. 
In a series of field experiments he found that the disease was as 
prevalent in fields in which the fungus had not been introduced as 
in the fields in which it had been thoroughly distributed. Accounts 
of these experiments are recorded in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, 
Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Reports of the State Ento- 
mologists of Illinois, 1888-1896. In the Twentieth Report he says: 
Whether the fungi of contagious diseases can be artificially made use of to 
hasten or intensify the serviceable effect of favorable weather with a frequency 
or to an extent to make this procedure economically worth while, I am not yet 
prepared to say. The methods of distributing these fungi in the fields have 
hitherto been too crude to make their substantial failure conclusive as to the 
whole subject. It now seems quite clear that they can be at the best only 
used as a secondary to other measures, especially the midsummer measures 
described in the third article of this report. If applicable at all, however, they 
can be brought to bear at a point now entirely defenseless, and it seems the 
duty of American economic entomologists to spare no pains to investigate to a 
final and indisputable conclusion which promises so much as a remote possi- 
bility that the chinch bug may be attacked even to occasional advantage after 
it has settled itself in fields of small grain. 
