River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1888-01-05

chlncn bugs ubeutu. DuIltiB tHo HOl
weather about the 9th to the Goth of
May, the bugs had just the weather to
swarm in the open air and begin to
deposit their eggs. These are usually
placed very near the surface, and most
toften attached to the roots of the
wheat plant; the female depositing
some 500 in single brood after
which she soon dies. and the young
brood appear in from 10 to 80 days
after.
Some insects attach their eggs to
whatever they choose with cement
that is very strong and impervious to
water, as the bot fly; others with a
cement of less tenacity, as the potato
beetle; while the chinch bug never
risks her eggs in one basket, but de-
pOsits them few at a time for several
weeks. So readily are these eggs
destroyed by water that, if we have
very wet, cold weather. from the time
wheat begins to stool out, for couple
of weeks. the danger from chinch bugs
is passed for the seasc3. One heavy
rain followed by cold Zine for a few
days greatly lessons the danger from
this source.
When they appear in large numbers
on any field of small grain, the law of
their growth is not to leave it till the
rations give out, either by their hav-
ing destroyed the crop or its having
ripened so it furnishes no longer food
for their tiny beaks. They live
by sucking the juices of plants; they
have no proper jaws.
The time most opportune to destroy
them is during their migrations from
ripened or destroyed field of grain
to Il more succulent one, as from early
maturing winter wheat, or rye, to
spring-sown crops, as wheat, barley,
oats OF corn. Flax alone of all the
crops sown in this valley is left I'M
molested. When short of forage all
the grasses, and even clover, are
taken. Many farmers the past season
plowed burrows between fields OF small
grain and corn, while others put up
tarred boards to stop the travelling
column, but | believe with rather I'M
satisfactory results.
The insect enemies of the chinch
bug are few, perhaps owing to their
offensive odor. The lady bug is about
the only one noticed by entomologiSts,
to which may be added very few
birds. Irrigation, where possible, is
a specific. In small patches, as at the
experimental station, sprinkling with
garden engine is practicable, but for
a large field all these appliances are
Intellectual.
have found decided benefit by APP
plying plaster and salt early to the
fields, especially where clover was
sown with the wheat. Not that any
kind of poison affects the bug, for
they live by piercing the stalk with
their tiny beaks ana sucking its Juices,
but by getting such body of green
vegetation on the ground as to bold
moisture. A piece of barley which
was sown with clover and top-dressed
with plaster and salt, yielded over
q bushels per acre, while in the
neighboring fields the crop was not
worth cutting even for the straw. On
field of some 40 acres, clover sown
with wheat, the crop was worth har-
vesting and threshing for the grain
some Z to 10 bushels per acre,-while
25 acres not protected by clover
yielded scarce bushels per acre. To
stop sowing wheat seems about the
only recourse of our farmers.
The appearance of the chinch bug
now is of vastly less injury than it
would have been twenty years ago.
Now, by what may be called bad man
agement, many fields scarcely pay at
the present prices of wheat more than
the cost of raising the crop, without
counting the rapid deterioration of the
soil by constant cropping of plant SO
dainty feeder as is the wheat plant.
Now that the times demand change
in the character of the crops in this
valley, the question of what we best
may try and grow in place of our great
staple, wheat, becomes important. On
this question |, with other persons
present, may have something to say in
the Institute to be held next March.