STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
527 
stance of the species being mostly found upon flowers, ./hithocoris 
or flower-bug. 
The Fai.se chinch bug, JlnthocorU pseudo-chinche, is Imt 0.08 in length, and is 
black, smooth and shining, with its antenna;, feet and lour anterior shanks and 
knees’pale dull yellow. Its wing covers arc white, tinged anteriorly with yellowish, 
with a large triangular black spot across their middle, occupying the whole poste¬ 
rior part of the thick coriaceous portion, this spot being brownish on its anterior 
edge. The thorax has an impressed line or groove across its middle. The thin 
membranous part of the wing covers is somewhat transparent and clear, but a va¬ 
riety (which may be named semiclarus ) occurs, in which its posterior half is per¬ 
ceptibly tinged with smoky. This species is closely related to the European species 
minutus Linn., and ni^rella Zetterstedt, but is readily distinguished by the colors 
of its legs, not to mention other characters. Identical as so many of our American 
species of this order certainly arc with those of Europe, it is possible that this 
species has been described by some author whose work I have not seen. Another 
small species resembling this in many points, the Xylocoris domcsticus Hahn, ap¬ 
pears to be as comnion upon this side of the Atlantic as it is in Europe, as is also 
the variety of this species, named dimidiata by Spinola and Parisiensis by Amyot 
and Serville. , 
This insect, so far as we yet know, is exempt from any molesta¬ 
tion by predaceous insects and other animals. No bird probably 
has a relish for such an unsavory morsel as one of these fetid 
chinch bugs. And this is undoubtedly one of the chief reasons 
why no check is given to its multiplication, and when one or two 
favorable seasons arrive, it is able to increase with a rapidity 
and to an extent which has few parallels among the insect races. 
Nor has any mode for destroying this insect or preventing its 
depredations, been discovered, of such efficacy as to bring it into 
public notice and favor. When they are migrating from one field 
into another, it is reported that they have been arrested by dig¬ 
ging a trench before them, up the crumbling dirt of the sides of 
which, they are unable to climb; and when the whole colony is 
thus imprisoned, they have been covered with straw and burned. 
By burning the dry leaves of the forest in places where they have 
settled in numbers, multitudes have been destroyed. A subscri¬ 
ber to the Southern Planter (vol. xv, p. 275), says he knows that 
strong soap suds will kill them, when on corn, if a half gill or 
gill be poured upon each stalk—a labor not half so great as a 
single hoeing of the crop is. When this insect became so numer¬ 
ous in North Carolina, in 1839, Mr. J. W. Jeffreys proposed 
that the farmers and planters should all abandon the sowing of 
wheat for two or three years, he deeming this the only measure 
