38 
THE CHINCH BUG. 
the two or three days following were not hot and dry enough to render it fit to burn 
readily. A few days later, however, on a dry day with a fair breeze, most of the strip 
remaining unburnt was burned over, and examination showed that great numbers of 
young bugs remaining were destroyed. Bugs, if under ground or secreted in roots of 
stubble, will not be killed; hence to destroy greatest numbers, as well as to secure 
mod rapid burning, the fire should be started in the hottest part of a dry day, when 
bugs in greatest number will be moving. 
Prevention of Migration — direct Remedies during and after Migration 
As has been so often pointed out, a great deal can be done in the 
way of destroying the insects at the time when they migrate from 
the wheat fields, towards the close of the first generation, to corn and 
other neighboring crops. 
Ditching . — As long ago as Le Baron’s first paper and as Bitch’s second 
report the method of digging a ditch or plowing a furrow around the 
infested field was in vogue. If a plowed furrow be made the perpen- 
dicular side should be towards the field to be protected and the earth 
should be kept friable by dragging a log or brush occasionally through 
it, or, better still, a triangular weighted trough. The migrating bugs 
will fail to climb the side of the furrow and will fall back into it, where 
they can be covered with straw and burned. With care and activity 
the neighboring fields can be thus protected. 
A modification of this plan appears in an unplaced newspaper cut- 
ting in our possession. It is as follows : 
When they first appear, as they usually do, on the side of the corn field, and be- 
fore they have entered it, cut five or six rows of the corn and clear the ground ; then 
plow a strip of land 8 or 10 feet wide, leaving a deep furrow in the center of the same. 
Then take the corn stalks which were taken from the land, and place them across the 
dead furrow, and the trap is complete. When the bugs approach the field, they will 
pass in under the corn placed across the dead furrow, and, preferring the shade and 
moisture, remain there until the stalks become perfectly dry, when they can be put 
through a process of cremation that will prove effectual in destroying them. Should 
they first appear in the middle of a field of corn (as it not unfrequently happens they do), 
they can be surrounded on the foregoing plan aud destroyed in the same way. This 
I>lau we consider the most practical of any that has come under our observation, and 
is corroborated to some extent by the experience of J. W. Martin, an observing farmer, 
whose experiments are given in the Osage Mission (Kans.) Journal. 
Tarred Boards or Tar alone . — The plan has been adopted and is recom- 
mended in the reports of Professor Kiley and others of using common 
fence boards — 6 inches wide or less— setting them upon edge and mak- 
ing a barrier of them around the infested fields, care being taken to cover 
the /ower edge so that the bugs will not crawl under them. The upper 
edge is spread with fresh tar, which is occasionally renewed. Vast num- 
bers are taken out from holes dug at intervals on the hitherside of the 
barrier, in which the marching armies collect. Commenting upon this 
remedy Professor Biley says: “with a little care to keep the tar moist 
by renewal the boards may be dispensed with and the tar poured out 
of a kettle on to the ground; about a gallon is required to the rod, and - 
it should be renewed every other day, oftener when rains prevail, until 
