MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 267 



patches from potato beetles and slugs, without finding it necessary to 

 use Paris green or other poisons. 



The grand lebia is an interesting insect, but if you want to learn 

 its ways you have to watch it carefully, for it is a shy and spry little 

 fellow, and does not like to be observed if it can help it. It u)ay be 

 seen industriously, and apparently without aim, going from leaf to leaf 

 and stem to stem ; but you may be sure it is always on the hunt for the 

 slugs of potato beetles, and as soon as it finds one it grabs and kills it 

 righi there and then by sucking every bit of juice out of its body, 

 throwing the remaining skin aside, and then going for another victim. 

 But when a person approaches, the lebia at once looks for a place of 

 safety, and the chances are you will hardly get a sight of it. With 

 careful approach, however, or with some patience in standing motion- 

 less, it is not difficult to catch the lebia at its work. At Woodbanks 

 we have seen only occasional specimens of the lebia. In New Jersey 

 they were very plentiful in most seasons. 



Undoubtedly lady-birds and the lebia are of much help to potato 

 growers who neglect to use poison promptly, and when the potato 

 beetles are not abundant, their insect enemies may alone be sufficient 

 to keep the pest in check. I, myself, have occasionally helped the 

 matter along by jarring or paddling the beetles and slugs from the 

 vines into pans, once or twice, and destroying them. 



In Fig. 5 we have the most common of the blister beetles, namely 

 the so-called "striped" or "old-fashioned" potato beetle {Epicanta vittata 

 slightly reduced in size. At Woodbanks we meet the blister beetles 

 only now and then, and have never seen them in numbers large enough 

 to make us fear injury from their depredations. On the other hand, 

 we are sometimes seriously pestered with grasshoppers, against which 

 we have only imperfect means of defense. As the blister beetles, in 

 their larval state, are known to subsist largely on grasshopper eggs, 

 and thus help to mitigate the grasshopper plague materially, we look 

 upon blister beetles as friends only, and never try to disturb them, or 

 drive them away. Should they ever become as injurious to our potato 

 vines as they have been reported to be elsewhere, we might be induced 

 to tight them by driving them from row to row, and finally into a wind- 

 row of straw, which is then to be set afire; but until we actually suffer 

 loss from these grasshopper destroyers, we shall not hurt them in the 

 least. 



Figure six of the illustration represents one of the tiger ^beetles 

 (Gicindela generosa), which, likeall its relatives, is a very active and per- 

 sistent destroyer of all insects that it can get hold of. All tiger beetles 

 lun rapidly and fly readily. Their head is large and their jaws long. 



