90 
Timothy may often be sowed in fall, to the best advantage, with 
winter wheat or rye, as repoited to me by Mr. John A. Kelly,* 
of Cumberland county, in a letter .dated June 25, 1887; and also 
more at length by Mr. E. E. Chester, of Champaign county. Mr. 
Chester’s experience demonstrates so precisely the very great 
value of this method as a protection to the wheat crop under the 
most unfavorable circumstances possible, that I will report it in 
| full. 
A field of twenty-eight acres was sown to wheat in the fall of 
1874, when the chinch bugs were innumerable throughout all 
this region—twenty acres with timothy and the remaining 
eight without,,timothy being sown on the latter in the spring. 
This eight-acre plot, like the rest in every respect except that 
mentioned, was overwhelmingly infested by the chinch bug, the 
grain at harvest yielding only seven bushels per acre, while the 
’ twenty acres, bearing a thrifty growth of fall timothy, remained 
wholly unaffected except for a short distance adjoining the other 
plot, and yielded an average of twenty bushels to the acre. The 
latter wheat sold as “No. 1,” at one dollar per bushel, and the 
former as “rejected,” at sixty-five cents. 
Winter rye is sometimes sowed with spring wheat, for similar 
reasons. 
Flax has also been sowed, with good result, on both spring and 
winter wheat, being itself exempt from attack and serving to shade 
the ground to a considerable extent. According to some observers, 
it even repels the bugs. 
The sowing of buckwheat and flax in the outer rows of fields of 
corn is likewise reported to have protected them from invasion. 
12. Ships of favorite food plants sowed as lures : millet or 
Hungarian around wheat or corn; spring wheat around winter 
wheat or oats; sorghum or Hungarian around corn or between 
the outer rows. The object of this procedure is to induce the 
adults escaping from wheat fields or emerging from their winter 
quarters, to lay their eggs in these special strips, which are then 
plowed up and planted to other crops, thus destroying the un¬ 
hatched eggs and the young. 
13. Sowing strips of favorite food plants near the whiter quar¬ 
ters of the hugs. When woodlands and thickets contain numbers 
of hibernating insects, these may be thus tempted to deposit their 
eggs, which may then be destroyed early wdth the vegetation used 
as a lure, the ground being afterwards replanted to some crop not 
affected by the chinch bug. 
14. Sowing strips of plants not injured by chinch hugs, as 
harriers to the migration of the spring generation. These should 
be interposed especially between fields of barley or wheat and 
* l ‘I have accidentally discovered that by sowing timothy with the wheat in thefall, if T get a good 
catch the bugs cannot breed, as the wheat starts first in spring and then the grass forms a dense 
shade by the tenth of May. When the bugs deposit their eggs they cannot hatch on account of 
too much shade.” 
