576 State Board of Agrioui.ture, &c. 



bered that we liave every reason for believing that it will 

 be much easier for the farmers of Vermont to check the 

 progress and increase of this insect at the outset, than to 

 fight it after it has become abundant. I am by no means 

 certain that it wdll ever be able to do tlie damage to the 

 Vermont potato crop that it has done fartlier West. The 

 comparative shortness of our seasons, the severity of our 

 winters, our wild lands and mountains, will all of them 

 check its progress, but allowing these barriers their full 

 weight, we still have abundant reason to fear that great 

 damage may be done. It will be profitable for us to exam- 

 ine the progress of tliis insect from its first onset. It ap- 

 pears to have been known for fifty years in the mountains 

 of Colorado where it feeds upon a sort of wild potato. It 

 was confined to that locality until after the cultivated po- 

 tato was brought near its native haunts in the progress of 

 settlement of the country. Then, most unfortunately, it 

 gradually acquired a taste for the cultivated potato and in- 

 creased food favoring increased numbers in the beetles, 

 they began to migrate eastward, devouring the potatoes as 

 they went. Its progress as given in various reports is as 

 follows : In 1859 it reached Nebraska, in 1861 the western 

 limit of Iowa, and in three or four years crossed that State, 

 going over the Mississippi River in 1864 and entering Illi- 

 nois at five different points during that year. Riley states 

 that the northern columns moved more rapidly than the 

 southern. In about two years it had spread over the whole 

 of Illinois, and in 1867 reached Indiana, crossing that State 

 during the year, and entering Ohio in 1868. In 1871 it 

 appeared in Western Kew York, and in 1874 in the east- 



