Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 147 
with plaster and the results were very favorable indeed. I have 
tried larger and larger quantities of salt and plaster mixed and 
ground together for the last few years, and the results have always 
been very favorable. But whether this is the reason the chinch- 
bugs did not trouble me or not I don’t know; but of one thing I 
am certain. If you sow plaster and sow clover seed, you can 
make the clover rank and strong. I believe in making a grass 
field all over my wheat field. I sow the salt as early as I can in 
the spring. 
Mr. Anderson. I believe this salt sowing is all played-out in 
Illinois. Those that experimented with it last year did not make 
anything of value out of it. Mr. Allen never had much experi¬ 
ence with chinch-bugs. There never were many of them in 
his neighborhood; so that his experience won’t do for a guide. A 
man that could raise 16 bushels to the acre has not had many 
chinch-bugs on his land. 
I defy a man to raise three bushels to the acre where the bugs 
are bad; but I will acknowledge that where land is very hard clay, 
the bugs are not so bad. The last year they destroyed the wheat 
totally on the best land there was in the country. In a buggy 
year like 1874, there is nothing that will prevent them. In regard 
to wintering them over in the soil, Mr. Wood explained that very 
well. I plow at least one hundred acres of corn stalks every year, 
and I never knew any injury to result from bugs wintering in the 
corn stalks, and I never knew them to winter in the ground. 
Mr. Porter. Had the hot weather anything to do with spoiling 
your wheat? 
Mr. Anderson. Hot and dry weather brings bugs. I have raised 
thirty bushels to the acre in hot weather when there was no bugs. 
But I adhere to the clover system—I believe in it, but I don’t be¬ 
lieve in this theory of plaster for all classes of land. My land is so 
rich that clover will lodge without plaster. My men told me year 
before last they could stretch out the clover as long as a pitch fork 
handle. 
Col. Warner. The thing that would have prevented fire in 
some cabin perhaps on the prairie, would not have prevented fire 
in Chicago when that terrible holocaust came; so with chinch-bugs. 
I have seen some places where the whole country was swept away 
