26 
THE CHINCH BUG. 
in his long article in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences 
of Philadelphia, gives the following account of his observations upon 
this disease in 1865. (Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences 
of Philadelphia for 1867.) 
July 16. — A farmer four miles from here informed me that a black coleopterous in- 
sect was destroying the chinch bugs on his farm very rapidly, and, although I found 
his supposition to be an error, yet I found many dying on the low creek-bottom laud 
from the effects of some disease, while they are yet in the larvae state — a remarkable 
and rare phenomenon for insects thus iu such a wholesale manner to be dying without 
attaining their maturity, and no insect enemy or other efficient cause to be observed 
capable of producing this important result. * * * 
On the low grounds the young chinch bugs are all dead from the disease above al- 
luded to, and the same disease is spreading rapidly on the hills and high prairies. 
The weather has been very wet since the first of July, and the barley above al- 
luded to, which I plowed beneath the ground, did not die, but assumed a yellow, 
sickly appearance ; in its shady, compressed, unnatural position, the ends of the 
heads project from beneath the furrows. The chinch bugs also remained alive for a 
time, but feeding on the sickly grain and shaded from the sunlight — what little we 
had— were attacked by disease in the same manner and about the same time as those 
on the low creek-bottom lands, meeting very rapidly the same fate, so that very few 
of them ever found their way to the neighboring corn. 
July 28. — In the fields where sixty days ago I saw plenty of eggs, and forty-two days 
ago an abundance of young chinch bugs, the imago are beginning to develop quite 
plentifully. Great numbers, iu all stages of their development, are dying of the pre- 
vailing disease. 
August 8. — The majority of the chinch bugs yet alive are in the imago state, but they 
are being rapidly destroyed by the prevailing epidemic disease, more fatal to them 
than the plague of Asiatic cholera ever was to man, more fatal than any recorded 
disease among men or animals since time began. Scarcely one in a thousand of the 
vast hosts of young bugs observed at the middle of June yet remain alive, but plenty 
of dead ones may be seen everywhere, lyiug on the ground, covered with the common 
mold of decomposing animal matter, and nothing else, even when examined by the 
microscope. Even of those that migrated to corn-fields a few weeks ago, iu such 
numbers as to cover the lower half of the corn-stalks, very few are to be found re- 
maining alive ; but the ground around the base of the corn-hills is almost literally 
covered with their moldering, decomposing dead bodies. This is a matter so common 
as to be observed and often spoken of by farmers. They are dead everywhere, not 
lying on the ground alone, but sticking to the blades and stalks of corn in great 
numbers, in all stages of their development, larva, pupa, and imago. 
August 22. — It is almost impossible to find even a few cabinet specimens of chinch 
bugs alive, so that I am quite sorry that I did not secure a large supply of specimens 
while they were so numerous in former years; for it really appears quite probable 
that even cabinet specimens will be hard to secure, whereby to remember the fallen 
race of the unnumbered millions of former years. 
September 13. — After a whole day’s searching in the corn-fields, I have just been able 
to find two larvm and a few imago chiuch bugs, against the great numbers above al- 
luded to in the corn about this time last year. 
* *■ * * •* * * 
It is generally believed among entomologists that insect euemies are the most effi- 
cient means in nature for exterminating noxious insects; but in this remarkable fact 
in the history of insects, the great epidemic of 1865 (there can be no doubt about 
this being an epidemic disease, because the insects died without attaining their ma- 
turity), we find a greater enemy, the greatest insect enemy ever recorded, a dreadful 
“plague,” that in a few days almost utterly annihilated a race of beings living in the 
