THE ENEMIES WE IMPORT. 621 



well known that in Russia this insect appears in such prodigious 

 numbers that the wheels of the vehicles roll crushingly through the 

 masses. Mr. Glover, the entomologist of the Department of Agri- 

 culture, states that a new grasshopper has appeared. Besides several 

 larva? and part of an entire insect found when cleansing the pots in the 

 greenhouse of the department, a pair of these strange creatures, a male 

 and a female, has been obtained. They went lustily to work on the 

 leaves of the coffee-plant, bananas, etc., in the greenhouse, " much in 

 the same manner as is done by our native katydids, by eating holes in 

 the leaves and gnawing away the edges. Their jaws were remarkably 

 strong and sharp, and when the insects were incautiously handled they 

 bit so severely as to draw blood. The male was about 1.75 inch in 

 length from the tip of the cone, or horn on its forehead, to the end of its 

 wing-covers when closed. The female measured 3.05 inches to the end 

 of the ovipositor, which itself was at least 1.25 inch in length. The gen- 

 eral color of both male and female was a light pea-green, and the wings 

 were delicately veined with distinct nerves, resembling the venation 

 of leaves. A very marked feature in this insect, when alive, is that 

 the labrum and clypeus are bright yellow, contrasting strongly with 

 the jet-black of the mandibles, which, together with the cone or horn 

 on the top of its head, gives it a remarkable appearance. This cone 

 or horn, which is placed obliquely upward on the top of the forehead, 

 forming a line with the face, is yellow beneath, black at the tip, and 

 ends in an acute point, which is somewhat bent downward at its sum- 

 mit. No insect resembling it having hitherto been found in this neigh- 

 borhood, there is but little doubt that it has lately been imported 

 with or on some foreign plants sent from South America, or the West 

 Indies ; and, as many exotic plants have been received from Balize, 

 British Honduras, it is probable that this grasshopper came in the egg- 

 state, on some of the plants from that locality, and was hatched out 

 last summer in the greenhouse. This fact alone admonishes us how 

 careful we should be when importing new and valuable plants from 

 abroad, for, if a large insect, nearly two inches in length, and fully the 

 size of a katydid, can be so easily introduced, how much more readily 

 the small and inconspicuous noxious insects hidden under the bark 

 would be likely to escape notice, until they had perpetuated their spe- 

 cies, so as to become partially naturalized and injurious to our plants ! 

 There is no danger, however, that this grasshopper will spread, and, 

 as it is apparently very tender and accustomed to a tropical climate, 

 most probably it would not be able to withstand the rigors of our win- 

 ters in the open air, and as all were killed or caught as soon as seen in 

 the greenhouse, there is very little probability of any being left to per- 

 petuate their race." Mr. Thomas has described this insect under the 

 name of Copiophora mucronata, in the " Canadian Entomologist." 



More curious and perhaps more interesting to scientific considera- 

 tion is the appearance, in the hot-houses of the Agricultural Department, 



