STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
513 
J. W. Jeffreys, writing from North Carolina the same year, 
gives the following history of their operations through the sea¬ 
son. “ They make their appearance in our wheat fields the last 
of May and the first of June, and continue therein and in oat 
fields until the grain is cut and secured, and they then march 
with all their forces and commence their attack on our corn¬ 
fields, where they continue until the cold weather commences, 
and then take flight to the woods, though you may discover them 
in our cornfields sheltered In the boot of the stalk in the depth 
of winter, yet they rarely survive the winter. I have discovered 
them in July taking flight from our wheat and oat fields, and 
yon may see thousands and millions flying to the woods, from 
which I am under the impression that they never return, but 
they leave a new generation behind, which are more destructive 
than their progenitors. No person can have the faintest idea or 
conception of the ratio of their increase, unless they study their 
history and movements. At this time there are myriads In our 
cornfields attached to the stalk, and they shelter under the boot 
or shuck of the stalk, and there multiply beyond conception, 
hundreds perhaps thousands attached to a single stalk.” (Cul¬ 
tivator, vol. vi, p. 201.) It would appear from this statement, 
that in July the old insects, probably, which are about to perish, 
take wing and fly to the forest ; and that on the approach of cold 
weather a large part of the new generation also makes the same 
migration. It may be that there is some truth in this statement, 
as the bugs would thus obtain a more secure shelter than they 
can find in the open fields; but I have seen no other testimony 
corroborating this. 
The bug had now become so numerous in Carolina and Vir¬ 
ginia, that with its continued increase in 1840, the total destruc¬ 
tion of their crops appeared inevitable. The prospect was so 
alarming, that Sidney Weller, of Brinckleyville, Halifax co., 
N. C., and others in his neighborhood, united in the spring of 
1840, in pledging a handsome sum as a prize for some feasible 
method to arrest the career of this depredator. But at this junc¬ 
ture, Providence interfered to accomplish what no human agency 
could have effected. Instead of being dry like the two or three 
preceding years, the summer of 1840 proved to be of an oppo- 
