The Chinch Bug

THE CHINCH BUG.

All About This Devastating Insect and the Means to Overcome It.

The chinch bug is one of the most destructive insects with which the American farmer has to contend. In consequence of constant requests for information about it the department of agriculture has had prepared a full and up to date account of the insect, its probable origin and diffusion, its habits and development, natural checks and remedial and preventive measures. The work has been admirably done by Professor F. M. Webster of Ohio, bulletin No. 15, on the chinch bug, being not only interesting from a scientific standpoint, but eminently practical in its comprehensive and explicit advice in regard to preventives and remedies, as is indicated by the following summary of the same:

In summing up the matter of remedial and preventive measures for the control of the chinch bug it may be stated that the insects may be destroyed in their places of hibernation by the use of fire. They can, under favorable meteorological conditions, be destroyed in the fields if present in sufficient abundance during the breeding season by the use of the fungus Sporotrichium globuliferum if promptly and carefully applied. They can be destroyed while in the act of migrating from one field to another by tarred barriers or deep furrows supplemented by post holes and by being buried under the surface of the ground with the plow and harrow, or the latter method can be applied after the bugs have been massed upon plots of some kind of vegetation for which the bugs are known to have a special fondness, which decoys should be so arranged as to either attract the females and induce them to oviposit therein, or they should be arranged with the idea of intercepting an invasion from wheatfields into cornfields, and by turning these decoys under with a plow and immediately smoothing and packing the surface by harrow and roller, thus destroying them. While in the cornfields they can be destroyed on the plants by applications of kerosene emulsion. Without vigilance and prompt action, however, only indifferent results are to be expected from any of these measures.

In regard to hibernation Professor Webster says: The chinch bug hibernates in the adult stage, and though there may be occasional exceptions, especially in the south, it has yet to be observed in very early spring in any other than the adult stage, at least in any locality north of Mexico. I have observed pupae in central Illinois apparently in hibernation in company with adults on Nov. 11, but there is no proof that these survived the winter. In Tensas parish, La., adults were abroad in considerable numbers during March, 1887, yet there was no indication of any young having wintered over.