STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
515 
The chinch bug has now multiplied and extended itself over 
all parts of Illinois and the adjacent districts of Indiana and 
Wisconsin, and has become a most formidable scourge. The dry- 
seasons which have recently occurred have increased it exces¬ 
sively. In passing over northern Illinois, in the autumn of 1854, 
I found it in myriads. In the middle of extensive prairies, on 
parting the grass in search of insects, the ground in some places 
was found covered and swarming with chinch bugs. The ap¬ 
pearance reminded me of that presented on parting the hair on 
a calf that has been poorly wintered, where the skin is found 
literally alive with vermin. Our western neighbors have for 
many years been congratulating themselves upon the security of 
their wheat crops, exempt from the midge and other insect dep¬ 
redators which were causing us such losses here at the east. But 
they now find they have in the chinch bug a foe more formida¬ 
ble and destructive even than the wheat midge; since it not only 
cuts off 1 their wheat but in many localities it takes the corn and 
other cultivated crops also. Although it is commonly only a 
strip upon the outer edge of the field whioh they devastate, yet 
in several instances the entire field is invaded and swarms with 
them, so that no grain is developed in the heads, and some have 
set fire to their wheat fields to consume the hosts of these ver¬ 
min which were gathered therein, with the hope of hereby les- 
e ning the numbers upon their farms the following year. The 
disgusting smell, moreover, which these bugs emit, is most loath¬ 
some and sickening to the laborers engaged in harvesting the 
wheat fields. Cilley’s reaping machine, made at Elgin, Illinois, 
has small deep boxes sunk in the platform, for the raker and 
three binders to stand in, that they may not have to stoop to 
their work as they would if standing upon the platform. As the 
machine is in operation, the feet of the men standing in these 
boxes become buried among the insects and fine chaff which fall 
into them. The men are so annoyed by these vermin, thus cov¬ 
ering their feet and crawling up their legs, that they many times 
stamp to shake off and crush the tormenting things. And 
whether dead or alive, when thus heaped together in masses, 
such a sfench arises from them, as, when wafted by the air it 
happens to come full in one’s face, is the most loathsome and 
Nauseating of anything that can be imagined. 
