FOUR-LINED LEAF-BUG : REMEDIES AND PREVENTIVES. 279 



over a large portion of the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains. 

 Say, when describing it fifty years ago, records it from the North West 

 Territory, Missouri, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Uhler men- 

 tions it as occurring in many parts of the North West on the eastern 

 side of the Rocky Mountains. It is also recorded from Ohio (Riley), 

 Illinois (Le Baron), Maryland (Glover), and from Ontario (Saunders). 



Remedies and Preventives. 



Futility of jjoisonous and other applications. — This yellow-lined leaf- 

 bug being a member of the order of Hemiptera, and one of the true 

 bugs, obtains its food, not by means of biting jaws and mastication of 

 the leaves, but by the aid of a proboscis or sucking beak which it in- 

 serts in the tissues of stalks, stem, leaf or bud, and draws thence the 

 juices upon which it alone subsists. It is evident, therefore, that these 

 insects, living as they do upon the sap of plants, may not be destroyed 

 by means of poisons applied to the surface of the stems and leaves. 

 The delicately pointed sucker would penetrate the poison even when 

 thickly coating the leaf, without imbibing any portion of it. 



It has been thought that they could be kept from plants through 

 applications which would be disagreeable to them, as dust, lime, ashes, 

 soot, soap-suds, tobacco- water, carbolic-acid washes, etc. None of 

 these, however, have, on trial, been found effectual. Cresylic-acid soap 

 has been recommended for this purpose,* but as a series of experiments 

 made with this material, of the extreme strength of one pound to five 

 gallons of water, to prevent the injuries of another destructive bug of 

 an allied genus, viz., Lygus /iweo?ari5 Beauv.,f proved entirely unsatis- 

 factory, there is no reason to believe that it will be found to bo of any 

 value as against Pcecilocapsus lineatus. 



Burning garden rul)hish. — The following will be found serviceable 

 means for arresting the depredations of this species, and the best that 

 we are prepared to ofler . The female passes the winter in sheltered 

 places, and probably, judging from allied species, to a large e.xtent, in 

 decaying vegetable matter lying upon the ground : the twisted folds of 

 dead leaves would seem to offer an excellent retreat for them. If, 

 therefore, at the close of the season, all the dead leaves, vines, plants, 

 bits of wood, and like worthless rubbish, be collected in piles and 

 burned, not only will the garden be placed in suitable order for the 

 opening of the ensuing spring, but the natural retreats of this bug, and 

 of a number of other injurious insects of similar habits of hibernation 

 will be broken up, and many will be burned in their hiding places. Clean 

 culture and an annual autumnal cleaning up and destruction of all 



* American Entomolorjist, i, 1809, p. 246. 

 +Id. ii, 1870, p. 293. 



