22 
These facts show the indisposition of the average farmer 1 
modify his practice until his losses are enormous and even ruii 
ous (“complete” or “nearly complete” by our reports),—to tal 
measures of prevention, in short, or to apply even remedial mea 
ures until his case is desperate, and probably beyond the reach ( 
aid. They also show that he lessens his wheat acreage when th 
crop is heavily damaged by chinch bugs, because wheat becoim 
unprofitable, but will do so little, if at all, as a consequencejj 
injury to corn. From the fact that the regions where the whe 
area had been largely reduced in 1887 were still regions of grea 
est injury to small grain and even to corn, we may, perhaps, ah 
infer that this diminution of the wheat area under the circur 
stances of extreme destruction there prevailing, had been witho 
good effect. 
A reduction—not abandonment—of the corn area has be* 
sometimes recommended as a measure calculated to restrict tj 
multiplication of the chinch bug by limiting the amount of foj 
for the second generation;* but the results of the comparison! 
the corn areas of 1886 with the different grades of injury to smj 
grain the following year, are unfavorable to this idea. In Soul 
em Illinois, for example, the corn areas corresponding to the ^ 
cessive grades of injury to small grain are respectively 2,5/2, 2,5f 
2,767, 2,554, 2,881, 2,971 and 2,648—a variable but ascending sen 
In Central Illinois, figures corresponding to the first four grac 
of damage—the only one available—are 6,06 ?, 5,3o2, 4,587 a 
4,285—a rapidly declining series. The figures for Northern Illini 
are without especial significance; and those for the whole SI 
show a nearly uniform decline from 4,949 acres, where no injtj 
was done to small grain, to 2,648, where the destruction \ 
complete,—this series thus running in the direction opposite^to t! 
which the supposition above mentioned would require. e ct 
elude, consequently, that any reduction of the corn acreage, to 
an effective remedy for chinch-bug injuries, must, at any rate, 
far below the area actually raised in any of the groups of fin 
ships represented on our tables. 
INJURY TO ALL CROPS COMBINED, COMPARED WITH AVERAGE OF EA 
To summarize my data more compactly I have attempted 
unite the estimates of damage to all the crops injured by 
chinch bugs so that the sum of the losses to agriculture due 
this species may be treated as a single quantity. This I co 
only do by regarding small grain, grass, and corn as of equal 
portance, numbering the grades of injury recognized from 0 tc 
adding together for each township card the three numbers of 
grades of injury reported for the three principal crops, and c 
sidering their sum as the total injury for the corresponding to - 
i 
See summary of current opinion, p. 37. 
