Mexico weekly ledger. (Mexico, Mo.) 1855-1956, 1895-02-21
THE FARMERS WORST PEST.
Almost ali Impossibility to Kill a
Chinch Bug-Yearly Loss by
These Insects Enormous.

| correspondence OF the Ledger.
| WORCESTER, Mo-, Feb. ia Rush
Hill correspondent wants TO know
what this cold weather will do for the
bountiful crop of chinch bugs" Ifhe
will read the following he may con-
| clude that Artemus Wards famous
phrase m"An amoosin' little cuss,n
would be applicable to this bug, only
"tough" ought to be substituted for
"amoosin' 1t may not be cheerful
reading for those who are aware that
there are tens of thousands OF these
| insect pests in winter quarters waiting
for warm weather to begin their sum-
mer's campaign.
Over wide area of the UnitedStates
it is the worst pest that the farmers
have to contend with and the most
difficult to destroy. Although man has
devised various means of destruction,
for more than a hundred years in those
parts of the country infected it has
caused more damage than all other in
furious insects combined, tine loss some
y
1t seems almost impossible to kill them
by poisoning, freezing or drowning.
The first of these methods fails be-
cause the chinch bug, instead of taking
his food like the potato beetle, grass
hopper, etc., inserts long lance like
tube into the plant from which the sap
is drawn without getting any of the
poison on the outside into his digestive
apparatus.
The bug passes the winter in the
adult state. They may now be found
in corn shocks, under rails, tufts of
grass or anything that will afford them
shelter. That the chances of freezing
or drowning are mighty slim may be
learned from the following: Bugs
frozen into the ice, when thawed and
warmed, crawl about as in spring.
Adult bugs of the first generation
moved and crawled away after being
under water for twenty-four hours.
The young lived after being immersed
from two to fourteen hours, the newly
hatched dying first. The bugs of the
second generation being those that
pass the winter are naturally hardy
set and adults survived after being i'm
mersed for twenty four, r,twenty-seven,
thirty, thirtythree and up to fifty
four hours. And Prof. johnson, who
conducted the experiment, thought
this wasn't the limit. Adult bugs lived
fourteen days floating on the water
without food but the young lived only
from few hours to four days. Adults
entirely immersed for ten hours were
taken out, dried and placed in bottle
which was tightly corked. Here they
lived twentyone days without food
and practically without air. In the
meantime some of the females laid
eggs; these hatched and the young
bugs lived two days in tlIcir prison
cell. 1t is best not to borrow trouble
or to "climb hill before we get to it,"
something direful may yet befall his
sbugship' before summer.
But from the foregoing it will be
seen that for hanging on to the little
'spark" the chinch bug is a bowling
success. "Hittin' 'em in the head with
a hammer" or "spittin' tobacco juice
in his eyes" might for time impair
his appetite and vision, but, though it
should turn so cold the mercury, in
falling SO low and SO fast, might melt
the glass from the heat caused by fric-
tion; though it should rain until the
genus homo would wade in water
above his eyebrows, yet alone would
this festive bug "bob up serenely" to
prove the fallacy of the theory of "the
survival of the fittest."
s, G., BUNSTINE.