512 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
prodigious numbers threaten to be even a more serious evil. 
They are called chinch bugs in Virginia, though they have no 
resemblance to our domestic pests (the bed-bug, which is com¬ 
monly named the “chinch” at the south), but their disgusting 
smell. They are nearly the shape and size of the small black 
flour weevil; can fly, but take to their wings reluctantly; have 
no mandibles, but a proboscis with which they penetrate the 
stalks of plants near the joints, and suck them to death. They 
have destroyed my oat crop totally; I shall not make the seed 
sown; my white May wheat, harvested the 28th of May, came to 
maturity too early for them, and was but slightly injured; but 
my white bearded wheat, harvested the 12th of June, was seri¬ 
ously injured by them—many ears not having a single grain 
filled in them. Bad as this is, it is nothing to what followed; 
tor as soon as the small grain was cut, they took to our corn¬ 
fields in suoh myriads as Is inconceivable to any but those who 
have witnessed them. I have seen some of my corn so perftctly 
black with them for two feet up, no particle of grain was to be 
seen but five or six inches of the tips of the leaves; and they 
hung to the under parts of them in knots like little swarms of 
bees. It takes them only one or two days to destroy the corn. 
From such an attack I saw no remedy but burning them up, 
corn and all; and by prompt doing so in that part of the field 
into which they first migrated in such immense numbers, hope I 
have saved the rest of it from total ruin, though patches of corn 
in some of my other fields have been totally killed.” (Cultiva¬ 
tor, vol. vi, p. 103.) Although Mr. G. does not surmise that 
this excessive increase of the chinch bug was caused by any 
peculiarity of the season, yet we learn from another part of his 
communication that the weather at this time was remarkably 
dry and hot. He says, “We are suffering severely from drought. 
The whole spring has been dry. Our gardens are burnt up, with¬ 
out having yet given us anything. Our corn is in a most 
deplorable state—so wilted it must perish if we do not get rain 
in a tew days. We have had but one rain to wet the earth 
below the furrow of a shovel plow since the 8th of May, and 
very little all April.” 
