510 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
The chinch bug is a small insect of a coal-black color, with 
snow white wing-covers, which are laid flat upon its back, and 
show a black dot upon the middle of their outer sides. The 
figure representing this insect its natural size (plate 4, fig. 2), 
will give the reader a very correct idea of its appearance. It 
belongs to the Order Hemiptera, the same order to which that dis¬ 
gusting object, the bed-bug belongs, and it exhales exactly the same 
loathsome smell which that insect does. It is by puncturing 
the plants with its sharp, slender, needle-like beak, and sucking 
out their juices, that this insect subsists. As it does not wound 
the plant by gnawing it, one would suppose that it could do no 
great injury. But their numbers are so immense that they bleed 
the plants on -which they congregate, so copiously, as not only 
to arrest their growth, but cause them to wither and die. They 
prefer wheat to every other kind of herbage, and when that is 
not at hand they gather upon oats or Indian corn or grass; but 
they seem to be able to nourish themselves upon the juices of all 
kinds of vegetables. They remain upon the wheat until it is 
harvested. They then migrate to oats or corn growing adjacent 
to the wheat field, running nimbly over the ground, appealing 
at first glance like a swarm of black ants. Though they have 
wings they seldom use them, and only fly the length of one or 
two paces at a time. 
It was just at the close of our revolutionary struggle,or about 
the year 1783, that this bug was first noticed as a depredator upon 
wheat, in the interior of North Carolina. It was at first supposed 
to be identical with the Hessian fly, which at this time was mak¬ 
ing such destruction in wheat crops on Long Island and in New 
Jersey. Two years before this, the British army accompanied 
by a detachment of its German auxiliaries had marched through 
North Carolina, and the battle of Guilford was fought. Mr. J- 
W. Jeffreys states (Albany Cultivator, first series, vol. vi, p. 201) 
that an aged and highly respectable citizen of Orange county, 
N. C., informed him that it was “ immediately after this event 
that the Hessian fly or Hessian bug destroyed their crops of 
wheat; and they believed and do believe to this day (1839), that 
those soldiers left the flies or bugs as they passed through the 
country.” The insects continued to increase and spread through 
