672 State Board of Agriculture, &c. 



season, with the enquiry : " Whetlier it is a potato bug." 

 Nine' times out of ten I could say it was not; but the num- 

 ber of actual potato beetles has led me to the belief that 

 there is hardly a town in the State that has not in it the 

 dreaded pest ; in small numbers, it is true, but yet if not 

 immediately attended to, two seasons more will blight our 

 crop of potatoes as elsewhere. That all may recognize this 

 pest, I will give something of its appearance, history and 

 habits. 



This bug, so called, is, strictly speaking, a beetle, and is 

 known to naturalists under the name of Doryphora decem- 

 lineata. Like other higher species of the Coleoptera, it 

 passes through a complete metamorphosis, but, unlike many 

 other beetles, it confines itselt during its entire life to the 

 same species of vegetation, and, unhappily, selects as its first 

 choice the potato. This beetle, however, is not, like many 

 of our pests, an importation, but an original native of the 

 far West. Its name would indicate Colorado as its birth- 

 place, but historical facts do not confirm it, as the bug com- 

 mitted severe depredations in Nebraska and Kansas before 

 it was ever seen in Colorado, and the farmers there consider 

 it of Eastern origin. It is, however, described by natural- 

 ists as a native of the Rocky Mountains, from whence it 

 carae as soon as the cultivation of the potato offered a step- 

 ping stone to civilized life. I am, however, from its history 

 which I have traced back as far as possible, of opinion that, 

 if it came from the Rocky Mountains, it came down the fer- 

 tile valley of the Missouri, or some of its branches, rather 

 than across the desert of near five hundred miles interven- 

 ing between the cultivated lands of Colorado, and the fertile 



