Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1894 [PAGE 318]

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STATE LABOEATOEY OF NATUEAL HISTOEY.

319

daily press, and the firm belief which very many of our farmers already had in it, made it seem very likely t h a t nothing would satisfy them except a chance to try it. 3. I was reasonably well satisfied from our- own field observations and laboratory experiments that, under favorable weather conditions, this contagious disease might do an immense service to those parts of the state threatened with the destruction of their wheat and corn, and as we could not foresee the weather of the season, I thought it incumbent on us to take measures to derive the greatest possible advantage from weather favorable to the disease, if such weather should follow. 4. I wished, finally, to see for myself how generally and accurately the somewhat complicated directions necessary to an intelligent use of this method would be followed out by t h e average farmer, when greatly interested in the result. This plan of experimentation and distribution was very promptly taken up and favorably considered by the executive committee of the Station board, and I was authorized to spend in this direction not to exceed $200. previous to the meeting of the board June 1st, and subsequent to that meeting $250 more. I consequently engaged the necessary assistants, enlarged our facilities, and published a general notice, to those interested, of my willingness to receive live chinch bugs and return infected ones in their place, using for this purpose t h e Associated Press, June 5, 1894. and sending out through the Experiment Station office a press bulletin on "The Chinch Bug in Illinois," dated June 7th. This offer was most eagerly accepted by a very large number of farmers, and we were presently very nearly overwhelmed—as were also the local express offices and t h e post-office—by packages of chinch bugs arriving from all parts of the state, and in all imaginable conditions. In order to avail myself of the much larger experience of the Kansas Station, I followed precisely, at first, the infection methods there in use, depending upon an exposure of the chinch bugs to insects dead with the disease and covered with the characteristic fungus growth, and to make assurance doubly sure I had obtained a supply of material directly from t h e Kansas State University, although we had the same fungus in our own infection boxes at the time. Notwithstanding the great enlargement of our facilities, and t h e continuous expert attention which the whole subject received, especially from Mr. John Marten, who has had principal charge of our disease experiments for four years, the contagion did not spread rapidly enough in our boxes to make it possible to meet at once more than a small percentage of the demand. I found later t h a t a part of this slow development was due to a difficulty which seems not to have been previously noticed by any one here or elsewhere, namely, the appearance in our infection boxes of swarms of minute mites which fed upon the fungus as fast as it was developed. Next, observing t h a t the thirteen-year locusts, which were rapidly disappearing, had many of them died with this disease, and bore a profuse growth of the characteristic fungus in excellent condition, I had a large quantity of these collected, and used dead locusts for distribution, accompanied in each case by chinch bugs which had been exposed to the infection. Finally, having ascertained as a result of experiments made previously and also at the time, t h a t the cultivated fungus grown upon a mixture of corn meal and beef broth, is in every way as effective for the destruction of chinch bugs as t h a t obtained from the insects themselves, I had a large quantity grown artificially on this material, and used this also for distribution. By these means I succeeded, by about t h e 20th of July, in supplying all who had sent requests up to t h e 10th of t h a t month—a little over two thousand for the season. As I had issued a second bulletin June 30th, giving notice t h a t i t would be impossible to continue t h e distribution beyond July 10th, I considered the obligations I had assumed thus fulfilled, and t h e work was brought practically to an end.