7o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in accordance with the suggestion made in my last report, is more 

 rational, and will j^rove a better safeguard: It is to furnish vessels, 

 plying between the two countries, with cards giving illustrated de- 

 scriptions of the insect in all stages, with the request that passengers 

 and crew destroy any stray specimens that may be found. Let Eng- 

 land and Ireland, together with the other European governments, co- 

 operate with Germany in this plan, and have such a card posted in 

 the warehouses of seaport towns, and the meeting-rooms of agricult- 

 ural societies, and a possible evil will be much more likely avoided." 

 Some English journals are discussing the question as to whether, with 

 the more moist and cool climate of this country, the ten-line potato- 

 beetle would thrive here even if imported. " There cannot be much 

 doubt that it will rather enjoy the more temperate clime ; for while it 

 thrives best during comparatively dry seasons, both excessive heat and 

 drought, as well as excessive wet, are prejudicial to it. It is argued 

 by others that on the Continent of Europe our dorypliora would not 

 thrive if introduced ; and, in a recent letter received from M. Oswald 

 de Kerchove,. of Gand, Belgium, author of an interesting pamphlet on 

 the insect, that gentleman says, ' I do not thinlc that the doryphora^ 

 awakened by our early warm weather, could resist the elFccts of the 

 late cold which we are apt to have in these European countries.' The 

 idea that the climate of North America is less extreme than that of 

 Europe is rather novel to us of the cisatlantic ; and, from a suffi- 

 ciently long residence in England, France, and Germany, I am decid- 



a h 



Fig. 5. Spined Soldier-Bug. Fig. 6. Convergent Ladt-Bird. 



a. beak enlarged ; 6, perfect insect, with the Larva, pupa, and beetle. Ci lors, oraui;e, white, 

 ' wingiS expanded on one side. Color, ochre- and black. 



OUB. 



edly of opinion that they delude themselves who suppose that dory- 

 phora could not thrive in the greater part of Europe ; and that to 

 abandon all precautionary measures against its introduction on such 

 grounds would be foolish. An insect which has spread from the high 

 table-lands of the Rocky Mountains across the Mississippi Valley to 

 the Atlantic, and that flourishes alike in the Stales of Minnesota, Wis- 

 consin, and Connecticut, and in Maryland, Virginia, and Texas in 

 fact, whei'ever the potato succeeds will not be likely to be discom- 

 fited 'in the potato-growing districts of Europe. Some few, again, 

 have ridiculed the idea of the insect's passage to Europe in any state, 

 arguing that it is an impossibility for any coleopterous insect to be 

 thus transferred from one country to another. Considering that half 



