Waterbury evening Democrat., 1907-09-03

Few insects, and certainly no other
 species of the natural order to which
 this one belongs, have caused such
 enormous pecuniary losses as has the
 chinch bug. No other insect native to
 the western hemisphere has spread
 its devastating hordes over a wider
 area of the country with more fatal
 effects to the staple grains of North
 America than has this one. But for
 the extreme susceptibility of the very
 young to destruction by drenching
 rains and to the less though not in-
 significant destructiveness during
 rainy seasons of the parasitic fungus,
 on both the adults and the young, the practice of raising grain year after year on the same areas, as followed
 in the United States, would become altogether unprofltable. Some of this insects own habits, emphasizing as they do the effects of meteorological conditions, are the most potent influ- ,ences that serve to hold it within
 bounds, by giving its tendency to ex- cessive increase decidedly spasmod- ic character. The shaded portion of the map shows the extent of territory affected by chinch bugs.
 For the farmer engaged in attempts to check the ravages of the insect in his fields the question of origin, or how it came to reach him, will at the time have little interest for him. It will suffice that it is present in overwhelming numbers, and what he will most desire will be to learn how to rid his premises of its most un. welcome presence in the most sum. mary manner possible.
 If however, the farmer happens to be a thoughtful and observing man, he will sometimes wonder how it is that, except in Virginia and the Caro- linas, a person need not be very aged fin order to remember a time when the chinch bug was an unknown fac tor in his profession, with a possible value far too small to merit considera- ''tion. If he happens to reside in northeastern Ohio, or in some DOT tions of New York, and has spent some time in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas or Minnesota, he will probably marvel at the striking difference in appear ance between many of the chinch bugs of his own locality, and those found in any of the aforementioned states, and will probably be able to satisfy himself of their identity only by the similarity of their vile odor. Again, he will probably be equally at a loss to understand why 1t is that his own timothy meadows are over- run by these pestiferous insects and destroyed, while in other localities, | perhaps less than 100 miles away, | similar meadows are left untouched, | the injury there being confined to | the wheat and corn fields.
 It is not the excessive numbers, but the persistency with which they will congregate en masse on limited areas, that renders the attack of | chinch bugs so fruitful of injury. With an ample supply of food the young develop and leisurely diffuse themselves over the adjacent fields, and there are neither swarming flights nor migration. In 1884, in northern Indiana. small field of wheat was severely attacked by chinch bugs. At harvest there was every prospect of migration from the field of wheat to an adjacent one of corn, and the bugs were present in sufficient numbers to have worked serious injury to the latter; but the wheat had grown up thinly on the ground, and there had sprung up among the grain great deal of mead ov foxtail grass, and panic grass. and to these grasses the bugs transferred their attention, finishing their devel- opment thereon, and later, so far as could be determined, they scattered by flight out over the adjacent fields, working no further injury. Pedes- trian migration may coutfuua for a