132 [ASSKMBLT, 



ing from the attack of wire-worms (larvae of beetles of the family 

 of ElateridoB), that the same methods of treatment would, to a 

 great extent, be applicable to either. 



Mr. A. F. Chaffee, of Cooperstown, N. T., has written as follows : 



I send you by mail a potato, which is a fair sample of many 

 which I have this year found in my garden. I send it as this will 

 give you a perfect idea of the worm and its work. Last season 

 this worm destroyed fully one-half of my potatoes. This year the 

 worm's work is not so bad, as I have harvested fully a month 

 earlier than last year. Still the ground is full of the pests. I am 

 not alone anxious over this worm ; many of ray neiojhbors and 

 some farmers around here have difficulty with the same worm. 

 Will you favor me by first naming it ; second, by giving me direc- 

 tions as to how I may rid my garden of them ? Phosphates, lime, 

 or ashes do not seem to effect them at all. 



The specimen potato sent was in a very bad condition — per- 

 haps one-fourth of its interior having been eaten and the cavities 

 tilled with excremental matter and soil. The injury to it had 

 in the greater part resulted from an attack of a species of Milliped 

 or thousand-legged worm known as Juliis ccertdeocincttis Wood. 



It is, in its full growth, a little over an inch in length, smooth 

 and polished, dark brown above and paler beneath, and with each 

 joint marked with from forty to fifty minute striae or lines with 

 flattened spaces between and bearing two pairs of legs. There 

 were, perhaps, t\vo hundred of them burrowing in cavities in the 

 potato — many of them being quite young, and of a pale color 

 almost white, except a lateral row of round brown spots of one on 

 each ring. 



Most of the Julidae feed upon decaying vegetable matter, but 

 this species has frequently been sent to me depredating on 

 potatoes. When injuring them but slightly upon the surface, it 

 has been supposed to cause " the scab " in potatoes, and it is pro- 

 bably justly chargeable with one of the forms of scab of which 

 there appears to be several kinds resulting from different agencies. 

 I have also received it from Geneva, N. Y., as abounding in the 

 soil of a nursery, where they must have been drawn by some crop 

 previous to the introduction of the nursery stock. I have identified 

 it from Madison, Wis., where it was found eating out the ripening 

 kernels of corn. In the Eleventh Illinois Report (p. 44), Julus 

 iinjyressus Say, is named as "feeding upon the kernels of corn on 

 ears which lay upon the'ground." 



