220 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



verse black lines, and the feet white, ringed with black. The 

 moths which come from tliese two worms are also different? 

 though looking much alike. It is possible that both these spe- 

 cies sometimes feed upon tobacco or upon the potato, as they 

 both do upon the tomato, but this is not usually the case. 



Mr. Robinson. — I wouid like to have the professor describe 

 the egg of the canker-worm, and tell us whereabouts in a tree 

 it is generally to be found. 



Mr. Smith. — Usually, if the females can get up the trees, 

 tliey will go up among the branches, but very frequently they 

 deposit their eggs on the sides of buildings, on fences, and 

 especially just below any protection that has been put round 

 the trees to prevent their going up. The eggs are very small, 

 sliglitly elongated, and are placed close togetlier on end in 

 little patches, the eggs all glued to each other and to tlie bark, 

 or whatever they are upon, by a varnish which the mother 

 moth secretes. If you wish to see tiie eggs, all you have to do 

 is to catch two or three of tlie females when they are coming 

 out of the ground, and shut them up in a box, and in the 

 course of two or three days you will have an abundance of 

 eggs. 



Dr. Riggs. — Ten years ago, on a farm in Bloomfield that I 

 owned, I had a potato field covered with a most disgusting 

 sort of bug. I -never had it before, and I have never had it 

 since. They were absolutely nauseating, tlieir whole bodies 

 being covered with mucus, and so offensive that I couU not 

 bear to go through the potato rows. They covered the whole 

 field, of about an acre, and ate the vines up, so that the crop 

 was almost a failure. They were about the size of the small 

 potato-bug which the professor has exhibited, but there was no 

 shell upon their backs. It was a glutinous mass, that seemed 

 to have legs sticking out of it, and the exudation from their 

 body was a jelly-like substance, exceedingly offensive, and dis- 

 gusting to handle. If you took one in your hand it would 

 slime it all over. 



Mr. White, of Putnam. — I have seen that kind of insect 

 more or less on my potatoes for ten or fifteen years. They 

 were quite plenty this year. I have sometimes had a great 



