224 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
Coptocycla a^lrichalcea were, however, tolerably abundant, but I do not 
think that the plants suffered seriously thereby. 
Cucumbers, beans, beets, Irish potatoes, etc., I did not see along Bis- 
cayne Bay; a few watermelon vines at Miami harbored some Diabrotica 
vittata, 
A small patch of Egg-plants, the only one along the shores of Biscayne 
Bay, which was planted at the slope of the rocky pine-land toward the 
" prairie" (a narrow strip of swampy land formed by the accumulation of 
decayed sea-weeds), presented a curious aspect when I first visited the spot 
in the first days of May. The plants were literally covered with the larvae 
of a Noctuid, Cloantha derupta, which had not only almost entirely de- 
foliated the egg-plants, but were also at work on some plants of Chenopo- 
dium near by. A week later not a single leaf was left on the plants and 
the worms had eaten into and hollowed out every one of the fruits of the 
egg-plant. The ground beneath the plants w*as full of pupae. I bred 
many specimens without obtaining a single parasite. 
> Some Tomatoes are raised on several settlements on Biscayne Bay, and 
I observed here, in the month of May, the young larva of a Heteropter- 
ous insect puncturing the ripening fruit. I mistook it at first for the larva 
of the common Squash-bug (Anasa tristis}, but later in the season I saw 
it at Lake Worth in great numbers, and also in the pupa and imago states. 
It proved to be Phthia picta (determined by Prof. Uhler), family Corcidce, 
a West Indian species hitherto not recorded from the United States. The 
tomato is extremely sensitive to the " sting " of this bug, and drops off 
and decays quickly. At Lake Worth this insect worked in company with 
an allied species, Spartocera diffusa. The latter was somewhat less nu- 
merous than the former, but in both species the puncturing of the tomato 
was done at least so far as my experience goes only in the larva and 
pupa stages. The only wild food-plant of both species appear to be Sol- 
anum nigrum, a common weed in semi-tropical Florida, and which is to 
be found near every human habitation throughout that region. It is no 
doubt by means of this plant that the two Heteroptera just mentioned 
have been enabled to gain a foothold in Florida and to spread from place 
to place. Phthia picta is capable of doing most serious damage to the 
tomato, and the danger is imminent that with the increase of the culti- 
vated area in southern Florida it may reach the larger and more impor- 
tant tomato fields in the northern part of the State. The advance of the 
insect immigrants from the West Indies into Florida appears to be an ex- 
tremely slow one when compared with the rapid spread of insects 
imported from Europe; nevertheless some Central American insect pests 
have, within quite recent times, spread over a considerable area of the 
Southern States. The common Murgantia histrionica is now widely 
.distributed with us, although it found its way through Mexico and not 
through the West Indies and Florida. The Cotton Stainer, Dysderctts 
suturellus, gradually spreads northward through Florida, and occurs 
already in northern Florida and Alabama, while another most unpleasant 
