268 FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



this article, where it was reported as injuring late grapes and corn. 

 When cabbage leaves are punctured by iheui, the leal", it is said, im- 

 mediately wilts, as if some poison had been injected into it, and soon 

 becomes quite withered. Of so serious a nature is the injury, that a 

 half-dozen grown insects, according to Dr. Lincecum, will kill a cab- 

 bage in a day. 



Difficult to Destroy. 



This bug is among the number of those dreaded insects whose dep- 

 redations we know not how to prevent by any of the ordinary plant 

 ap[)lications. Sprinkling the plants with salt, lime, ashes, dust, soot, 

 etc., has been recommended, but these and all similar means prove of 

 very little service, as the insect easily penetrates through them into 

 the interior to obtain its food in the unaltered juices of the plant. 

 Even the popular insecticides — hellebore, pryethrum, Paris green, and 

 London purple, as ordinarily applied, fail to destroy them, as the fol- 

 lowing experiments tried by me will show : Examples of the different 

 stages, of larva, pupa and the perfect insect, were dropped into jars 

 of the four insecticides above mentioned, and rolled over and over in 

 the powders until thoroughly covered by them. They were then 

 placed in separate boxes and examined from time to time. Those from 

 the pyrethrum and hellebore jars showed for a few hours some diffi- 

 culty in locomotion ; the others appeared unaffected. The following 

 day they were all in full vigor, with the exception of a single pupa, 

 which was in a weak condition when placed in the hellebore, and its 

 death within a day or two thereafter may not have resulted from its 

 hellfbore dusting. The hellebore and pyrethrum had been obtained 

 fresh from the druggist expressly for the experiments. There is no 

 reason to believe that the above substances, if applied in water to the 

 insects upon their food-plants, would have proved more effectual, for 

 as they can neither be absorbed by the leaves to any appreciable extent, 

 or the arsenic of the arsenical preparations taken up in the circulation 

 by the rootlets, the plant-juices, upon which alone the insect subsists, 

 cannot be affected by even such poisonous applications. 



Absence of Parasites. 



No parasites are Known to prey upon the species, nor is there knowl- 

 edge of its being eaten by poultry or any bird. It is stated (Glover's 

 Manusa-ipi Notes on the Hemijjtera, p. 44), that in South Carolina, 

 another insect, belonging to the same order of Hemiptera — Lepto- 

 glossus phyllopus (Linn.) — has been seen in the act of destroying i t, by 

 impaling it upon its proboscis, and sucking its juices. Unfortunately 

 this fratricide— the murderer and the victim both belonging to the Fen- 



