6 
develops' when most plants attacked by chinch bugs, excepting 
corn, are either dead or have ceased to grow rapidly, and the 
alternative food resources of the insects must be relatively tew and 
slight. 
SUCCESSIVE ABANDONMENT OF CORN AND WHEAT. 
The ideal procedure with wheat and corn, is doubtless the sup¬ 
pression of corn one year and of wheat the next, cutting down t e 
second chinch-bug generation of one season and the first ot the 
following. The effect of this rotation also was indicated by a 
spontaneous experiment made by nature in parts of Marion and 
Clinton counties in 1887 and 1888. Here the severe drouth of 
1887 cut short the corn, in some neighborhoods early destroying 
it, so that not a stalk in acres ever formed an ear ; and the wheat 
sown the following autumn was so badly winter-killed that prac¬ 
tically all was plowed up in spring, the ground being replanted 
to other crops. As if in consequence of these occurrences, the 
chinch bugs in this region in the spring of 1888 were much fewer 
than in 1887, not more than one fourth as numerous according to 
my own judgment, local observers putting the difference at about 
one half. 
SECONDARY EFFECTS OF THE ABANDONMENT OF WHEAT. 
Suspension or abandonment of wheat culture has been for a 
hundred years the favorite method of evading the ravages ot the 
chinch bug; but, so far as I know, this measure has heretofore 
been taken only when the insect hordes were about to disappear 
under the action of other and more general causes, and the real 
effect of this variation in farm management has consequently not 
been clearly demonstrated. Other unplanned experiments °1 e 
kind which I have found so instructive lately, have thrown much 
light on this subject also. 
About Edgewood, in Effingham county, where scarcely any wheat 
was raised in 1887, it was clear to a demonstration, June Al, that 
the chinch bugs had lived and bred since early spring m timothy 
meadows, many of which were already hopelessly ruined for the 
year; and from these meadows the bugs were then making their 
way to oats and corn. Oats fields had also become infested y 
flying adults in spring, and young and old were everywhere dis¬ 
tributed, many acres of oats being dead and dried up. 
In some parts of Clay county—notably about Flora—the amount 
of land in wheat had been gradually diminished from year to 
year, until, in the spring of 1888, I could find but two sma 
fields in a considerable district. The insect wave had here, how 
ever, but just reached its height, and to the general alarm, not 
only were the bugs more numerous than ever before, but they, 
were widely and generally dispersed through oats and young 
