117 
Forbes, S. A.—The Chinch Bug. (An address delivered before a 
meeting of farmers at Belleville, Ill., Sept. 11, 1888, and re¬ 
ported for the Belleville Weekly Advocate, Sept. 28, 1888. )* 
The statistician of the U. S. Department of Agriculture esti- 
nates the loss in this State last year due to the chinch bug at 
ibout $12,000,000, a sum large enough to furnish bread to every 
nan, woman, and child in Illinois for an entire year. Becent 
ifforts at cooperation among farmers an encouraging sign, although 
‘the best time for action passed four years ago, when it became 
widen t that a chinch-bug outbreak was impending;” but demon¬ 
strate now that you cdn and will control this pest and you will 
tdd at least twenty per cent, to the value of every farm in South¬ 
ern Illinois. Points in life history are given; mode of hiber- 
lation, favorite food plants, those it does not attack, etc. The 
;mpty crusts of the last moult are often mistaken for dead 
•hinch bugs. The old hibernating bugs are nearly all dead by the 
niddle of June, and the winged form of the new generation begins 
o appear about July 1, It is commonly about sixty days after 
he laying of the egg before the winged insect appears, but as the 
‘ggs are laid at intervals during three or four weeks the bugs 
rom the first are several weeks old when the latest laid eggs are 
latching. The spring generation makes its way, chiefly on foot, 
rom ripening wheat to oats or corn, the last of the brood getting 
vings in August. The eggs for the second generation are laid 
>ehind the sheaths of the leaves at the base of the corn stalk or 
n the ground about the roots. Three broods are said to occur 
n the latitude of North Carolina, and a few possible examples 
>f a third brood have been noticed in Southern Illinois, but, 
iractically, the insect is two-brooded in this State. The varying 
lumbers of the chinch bug are chiefly due to climatic differences. 
Cheir bird and insect enemies are insignificant, but they are sub- 
ect to two fatal contagious diseases, one of them now apparent 
n Clinton and adjacent counties. “Their enormous numbers under 
avorable conditions are accounted for by their high rate of mul- 
iplication, a single female having the capacity to give origin dur- 
ng a single season, if all things are favorable, to about 90,000 
irogeny. Two hundred hibernating bugs may therefore produce 
.8,000,000 during the succeeding summer,—enough, if placed end 
o end, to make a file [twenty-]eight miles in length.” The proper 
sconomic procedure is first pointedly intimated by an account of the 
neasures to be employed if one would raise chinch bugs successfully 
md keep them up to the highest level of multiplication; and the 
subject is then dealt with directly by giving a practical account 
)f remedial and preventive measures. The hibernating season, the 
ime of attack on wheat in spring, and that of midsummer migra- 
ion from breeding ground, said to be critical periods in life his- 
ory of insect. Fire is the means of attack in the first instance, 
md late in fall or early in spring the torch should be carried to 
* This address was also made at Robinson, Crawford Co., at Louisville, Clay Co., and at Mt. 
armel, Wabash Co. ’ 
