102 INSECTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



frames expeditiously and economically, and his directions may be 

 found in the second volume of the " New England Farmer",* 

 and in Fessenden's "New American Gardener",! under the 

 article Cucumber. 



The cucumber flea-beetle above mentioned, a little, black, 

 jumping insect, well known for the injury done by it, in the 

 spring, to young cucumber plants, belongs to another family of 

 the Chrysomelian tribe, called HalticaDjE. The following are 

 the chief peculiarities of the beetles of this family. The body is 

 oval and very convex above ; the thorax is short, nearly or quite 

 as wide as the wing-covers behind, and narrowed before ; the 

 head is pretty broad ; the antennae are slender, about half the 

 length of the body, and are implanted nearly on the middle of the 

 forehead ; the hindmost thighs are very thick, being formed for 

 leaping ; hence these insects have been called flea-beetles, and 

 the scientific name Halticd, derived from a word signifying to 

 leap, has been applied to them. The surface of the body is 

 smooth, generally polished, and often prettily or brilliantly col- 

 ored. The claws are very thick at one end, are deeply notched 

 towards the other, and terminate with a long curved and sharp 

 point, which enables the insect to lay hold firmly upon the leaves 

 of the plants on which they live. These beetles eat the leaves of 

 vegetables, preferring especially plants of the cabbage, turnip, mus- 

 tard, cress, radish, and horse-radish kind, or those, which, in 

 botanical language, are called cruciferous plants, to which they are 

 often exceedingly injurious. The turnip-fly or more properly 

 turnip flea-beetle is one of these Halticas, which lays waste the 

 turnip fields in Europe, devouring the seed-leaves of the plants as 

 soon as they appear above the ground, and continuing their ravages 

 upon new crops throughout the summer. It is stated in Young's 

 " Annals of Agriculture"]: that the loss, in Devonshire, Eng- 

 land, in one season, from the destruction of the turnip crops by 

 this little insect, was estimated at one hundred thousand pounds 

 sterling. Another small flea-beetle is often very injurious to the 

 grape-vines in Europe, and a larger species attacks the same 



* Pan-c 305. I Sixth edition, page 91. | Vol. VII., p. 102. 



