“In estimating probabilities of continued damage we must take 
account of the following facts:” Two successive years of chinch- 
bug outbreak have seldom occurred in the same territory; the 
breeding of the chinch bug has been cut short by a scarcity of 
food, their injuries and the drouth having nearly ruined the corn: 
there is a chance for a variable winter and a wet spring or even 
summer, dry weather having prevailed to a great extent in South¬ 
ern Illinois for several years; disease may yet prevail, although 
there is no immediate promise; there is a sufficient number of 
bugs maturing, or about to mature, to overwhelm the country they 
now occupy and to greatly extend their area of devastation should 
the greater part of them live till spring and breed; and, conse¬ 
quently, the weather is practically the determining factor for the 
next year. Sufficient prospect of injury next year to make reme¬ 
dial and preventive measures imperative, and the following are 
recommended: (1) abandonment of small grain for a year where 
corn is principal crop, to starve out first brood; (2) abandonment 
of corn for a year where small grains are the principal crop, to 
cut short food of midsummer brood; (3) destruction in winter 
quarters; (4) heavy manuring; (5) heavy seeding; (6) sowing clo¬ 
ver in wheat fields; (7) sowing Hungarian grass as lure; (8) 
“strewing powdered lime around edges of corn fields to prevent 
entrance of bugs on foot”—practiced successfully in one instance 
in Washington county; (9) plowing furrows around fields or mak¬ 
ing belt of coal-tar, irrigating infested fields, and killing bugs 
with diluted kerosene emulsion,—these last, “measures of little 
promise or considerable expense” which may sometimes be use¬ 
ful. The artificial cultivation and spread of the germs of the con¬ 
tagious diseases of these insects is as yet only a theoretical remedy. 
Some of the foregoing measures may be taken to advantage by 
the individual farmer; others are of little or no avail unless action 
is concerted. 
* 
[Weed, Clarence M.] — Southern Illinois Notes. (Prairie Farmer, 
Oct. 2, 1886.) 
Mention of great damage to farm crops in Southern Illinois by 
chinch bugs and drouth. 
Baldwin, Elmer, and Forbes, S. A.—Chinch Bugs and Spring 
Wheat. (Prairie Farmer, Oct. 9, 1886.) 
Mr. Baldwin contends that spring wheat is the favorite breed¬ 
ing crop of the chinch bug, “and is responsible for its first intro¬ 
duction and rapid increase in every locality. This may not be 
true of every locality, but I know it is of this” [La Salle Co., 
Ill]. Prof. Forbes calls attention to outbreaks in Southern Illi¬ 
nois, where no spring wheat is grown, and records instances of its 
breeding freely and successfully in early oats and corn. He adds 
that as it rarely occurs in destructive numbers for more than one 
or two years in the same locality, whatever the agricultural prac¬ 
tice, any general measure is likely to receive more credit than is 
due to it. 
