89 
Complaints of serious injury and appeals for aid were received 
at this office during the year from six hundred and ten* towns in 
seventy-six counties—a number not previously equaled since 1887. 
The greater part of these appeals took the form of applications 
for material with which to introduce the contagious insect diseases 
into infested fields. While the results of our previous experi¬ 
mental work with the principal fungous disease of the chinch-bug 
were not favorable to the idea that it would be found to have 
any considerable value as a means of arresting injury by the 
chinch-bug where conditions were particularly favorable to the 
multiplication and maintenance of that insect, I was nevertheless 
induced to undertake to supply this demand, largely by the follow¬ 
ing considerations: 
Notwithstanding our previous experience, I was not yet prepared 
to say positively that the contagious-disease method if persistently 
followed up would not take effect in very many cases even under 
ordinary circumstances; and as long as there was even an appre¬ 
ciable chance that the farmers might thus save any considerable 
part of their crops this season by our aid it seemed to me that they 
were entitled to the benefit of the doubt in favor of this procedure, 
especially as the expense of a general distribution would be at most 
a trifle compared with the great interests at stake. 
The general credit which this method had received through the 
agricultural papers and the daily press, as well as through several 
state official publications, and the firm belief which very many of 
our farmers already had in it, made it seem very likely that nothing 
would satisfy them except a chance to try it. 
I was fairly well assured, as a result of our own field observations 
and laboratory experiments, that under favorable weather conditions 
it might do an immense service to those parts of the State threatened 
with the destruction of wheat and corn; and as we could not foresee 
the weather of the season, I thought it incumbent on me to take 
measures to derive the greatest possible advantage from weather 
favorable to the spread of the disease, if such weather should follow. 
The demand for contagion material became so great by June 1 
that it was evident that I should no longer be able to meet it 
from current appropriations at my disposal and with the aid of 
my usual corps of assistants. I consequently suggested, early in 
June, to the authorites of the State Agricultural Experiment 
Station at Urbana, the idea of providing for more elaborate ex¬ 
periments in the field,'and of supplying a limited amount of tested 
infection material for trial by farmers themselves. This plan of 
experimentation and distribution was very promptly taken up and 
favorably considered by the executive committee of the Station 
Board, and I consequently engaged the necessary assistants, en¬ 
larged our facilities, and published a general notice to those in¬ 
terested of my willingness to receive live chinch-bugs and to re¬ 
turn infected ones in their place. This offer was most eagerly 
accepted by a large number of farmers, and we were presently very 
*ln Bulletin 5 from the State Entomologists office this number was incorrectly given as five 
hundred. 
