114 
The Bulletin 
CONTROL 
The control of the corn bill bug is not an especially easy farm prac¬ 
tice. This is due to a number of different factors. In the first place, 
the insect cannot be attacked by any direct remedies, both because of its 
hardiness and because most of its life is spent in the stalk of com or 
buried beneath the ground. The only direct method that might be used 
to any avail against this insect is band picking of the adults in the 
early spring and destroying them by throwing them into boiling water 
or kerosene. This practice would be too expensive to use on general 
crop corn, but might be used in small fields of corn which were being 
grown for roasting-ear purposes. If this method were to be used it 
would be advisable to scatter chips about the field under which the bugs 
would crawl during the middle of the day and from which they could 
be collected readily. 
In the main the farmer in the bill bug section of the State will have 
to depend upon a slight modification of his usual farm practice to 
control the corn bill bug. 
Careful observations made during the past several seasons show quite 
clearly that the control is not a very easy matter. It has also been 
clearly demonstrated that no one method can be used with any great 
success against this insect, but rather that the control is dependent upon 
a number of factors which, taken together, give us a system of corn 
farming somewhat different from the systems practiced in the corn bill 
bug section at the present time. These factors are discussed separately 
in some detail below, but it must be emphasized again that the farmer 
cannot put his dependence in any one method alone, but, instead, that 
he must work out a system of corn farming with these various factors in 
mind. In this connection it must also be emphasized here that a system 
which is built upon a basis of the factors here given is not necessarily 
a good system for growing corn in all sections of the State under all 
conditions, but rather that this is the system the farmer should employ 
in the corn bill bug sections of the State if he hopes to grow corn with 
the minimum of loss by corn bill bugs. Neither is it intended to imply 
that this system will avoid the attacks of other insect enemies of corn, 
but is simply to be used where the corn bill hug is the most important 
insect enemy of corn. The writer believes that the farmer who follows 
this system will also be doing the most important things in the control 
of many of the more important insect enemies of corn; but there are so 
many factors involved both in the many varieties of insect pests and 
climatic and other conditions which have not been studied in detail that 
it would not be surprising if certain insects were, not controlled by 
following the suggestions as outlined here. 
The writer believes that the following are the most important factors 
involved in any system for the control of the corn bill bug, both from 
the standpoint of ease and cheapness of application: (1) time of plant- 
