THE PLANT-BUGS. 
199 
gentleman had no difficulty in obtaining a sufficient number 
without going out of his own garden. The eggs of the 
chinch-bug are laid in the ground, in which the young have 
been found, in great abundance, at the depth of an inch or 
more. They make their appearance on wheat about the 
middle of June, and may be seen in their various stages of 
growth on all kinds of grain, on corn, and on herds-grass, 
durino; the whole summer. Some of them continue alive 
through the winter in their places of concealment. A very 
good account of these destructive bugs, with an enlarged 
figure, will be found in the “ Prairie Farmer,” for December, 
1845. In the same publication, for September, 1850, there 
is an excellent description of the chinch-bug, by Dr. Le 
Baron, who, not being aware that it had been previously 
named by Mr. Say, called it Rhyparochromus devastator. 
During the summer of 1838, and particularly in the early 
part of the season, which, it will be recollected, was very dry, 
our gardens and fields swarmed with immense numbers of 
little bugs, that attacked almost all kinds of herbaceous 
plants. My attention was first drawn to them in conse¬ 
quence of the injury sustained by a few dahlias, marigolds, 
asters, and balsams, with which I had stocked a little border 
around my house. In the garden of my friends the iMessrs. 
Hovey, at Cambridge Port, I observed, about the same time, 
that these insects were committing sad havoc, and was in¬ 
formed that various means had been tried to destroy or expel 
them without effect. On visiting my potato-patch shortly 
afterwards, I found the insects there also in great numbers on 
the yines; and, from information worthy of credit, am inclined 
to belieye that these insects contributed, quite as much as 
the dry weather of that season, to diminish the produce of the 
potato-fields in this yicinity. They principally attacked the 
buds, terminal shoots, and most succulent growing parts 
of these and other herbaceous plants, puncturing them with 
their beaks, drawing off the sap, and, from the effects sub¬ 
sequently yisible, apparently poisoning the parts attacked. 
