COLEOPTERA. Ill 



well as by day, and are attracted by lights, burning splinters of 

 pine knots or of staves of tar-barrels, stuck into the ground 

 during the night, around the plants, have been found useful in 

 destroying these beetles. The most effectual preservative both 

 ao-ainst these insects and the equally destructive black flea- 

 beetles which infest the vines in the spring, consists in covering 

 the young vines with millinet stretched over small wooden 

 frames. Mr. Levi Bartlett, of Warner, N. H., has described a 

 method for making these frames expeditiously and economi- 

 cally, and his directions may be found in the second volume 

 of the " New England Farmer," * and in Fessenden's " New 

 American Gardener," f 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 HALTiCADiE. 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 lergth 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 Haltica, 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 colored. 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, mustard, cress, radish, and horse-radish 

 kind, or those, which, in botanical language, are called cruci- 

 ferous 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, 



* Page 305. t Sixth edition, page 91. 



