THE PRESENT CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF THE 
CHINCH BUG IN ILLINOIS* 
BY S. A. FORBES. 
For three successive years the chinch bug has been extraordi¬ 
narily destructive in Southern Illinois, gradually extending the 
area of its investment, until now it occupies there the larger part 
of thirty counties. 
Reports of its occurrence in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin 
led us in July to a careful search for it in Northern Illinois; and 
there also, especially in the counties of Lake, Winnebago, Stephen¬ 
son, and Lee, it was found locally numerous, and occasionally de¬ 
cidedly injurious to corn and oats adjoining wheat and barley. It 
has freely bred there this season, in both winter and spring wheat 
and in barley; and, as these ripened, has made its way on foot 
into corn and oats adjoining. From some of the western counties 
of the State, noticeably from Rock Island county, it is also reported 
present in great numbers, and injurious to both wheat and corn; 
•while many correspondents throughout Central and Western Illinois 
have notified me of its appearance in numbers to attract attention 
and to threaten serious injury in the near future. 
The weather conditions in Northern, Southern, and Western Illi¬ 
nois last year, and throughout the State this season, have been 
eminently favorable to the multiplication of the chinch bug; and 
if these continue unchanged there is great danger that the larger 
part of the State may be overrun by it another season. In other 
words, the agricultural interest of this State is threatened with a 
loss of possibly fifty million dollars in a single yeary a condition 
of affairs which clearly constitutes an emergency calling for the 
use of every resource of knowledge, enterprise, and industry which 
can be brought to bear; but especially demanding intelligent joint 
action on a common 'plan of defense. While individual farmers 
*This article, published in 1887 as a bulletin of the office, is here reprinted 
circulation than the original edition of one thousand copies made possible 
for a wider 
tThe damage done by this insect to the corn crop alone in Illinois exceeded twenty-two million 
dollars in 1874, according to the careful calculations made by Dr. Cyruslhomas. (See <thKep. St. 
Ent. Ill., p. 17.) 
