THE COTTONWOOD LEAF-BEETLE. 429 



"Yankton, Dak., June2, 1884. 



"Sir: We forward to yoii by to-day's mail a small box containing a number of 

 bugs gathered yesterday on the cottonwood groves in this and adjoining counties. 

 These bngs were first noticed during the season of 1883, when they were confined to 

 only a few timber claims in the towns 97 and 98, range 57, Hutchinson County, 

 Dak. In the fall of 1883 they had covered quite an expanse of country, and from all 

 sides reports came of the destruction of planted groves by these bugs. This spring 

 nearly everybody who owns a timber-culture claim and who has called at our office 

 reported destruction of trees, and we therefore yesterday examined into it, going 

 through towns 95, 96, 97, ranges 55, 50, and 57, and found a condition which is really 

 sickening. Claimants who for years and years have planted their trees, and had now 

 succeeded in getting a good growth of trees growing, have to stand by and look on while 

 their labor of years is destroyed in a few days. Wherever they are they are by the 

 millions; they eat the leaves, and it only takes a few hours to finish a tree, and those 

 trees that were attacked last year have failed to grow again this spring. So far they 

 have attacked principally cottonwood and some box-elder. We would respectfully 

 sugsest that these bugs be handed to some expert for report and recommendation as 

 to the best methods of destroying them. There ought also to be something done to 

 protect claimants whose trees are now being destroyed. Most of the timber claims 

 in the counties named have been taken from six to ten years ago, and nearly every 

 claimant has apparently complied with laws, at least we counted from the buggy 

 while on a hill yesterday thirty-six different groves, presumably all timber-culture 

 claims, where the law has been complied with, and where parties would now be 

 entitled to make proof only for these bugs. There ought to be a special act of relief, 

 allowing those parties to make proof, as to replant and to commence all this work 

 over again will be necessarily not only a hardship, but will, in a good many cases, 

 be an impossibility, the time within which proof ia required to be made being too 

 short. 



"Very respectfully, 



"Ellerman & Peewilleb. 



" Hon. Commissioner General Land Office, 



" Washington, D. C." 



In 18 — , Mr. Lawrence Bruner reported as follows : 



"The striped cottonwood beetle {Plagiodera scripta) has also been quite numerous 

 in several portions of the West during the year, and did much injury to both cotton- 

 woods and willows upon high land. Especially was this true with respect to the 

 young trees upon tree claims in newly settled areas. There has been considerable 

 vexation at the United States laud offices on account of the injuries of this insect 

 and of a species of saw-fly, the larvae of which attack the foliage of our various 

 species of ash trees, causing them to die. W^hen the time comes for 'proving up' 

 there are too few trees growing upon the tract of land, and the result is its probable 

 loss to the enterer." 



Similar letters to this were received from many points in the region indicated. 



This species has long been known to feed upon the leaves of the different species 

 of willow, but upon those trees it was never remarkably abundant or injurious. 

 Upon several of the species of Populus it was also found, but its great liking for 

 cottonwood seems to be of comparatively recent acquirement. In speaking of this 

 change of habit we remarked as follows, in the New York Weekly Tribune for Octo- 

 ber 9, 1878 : 



"The interesting feature about this insect to the forester, however, is that it has 

 ot late years acquired an especial liking for the cottonwood. It has, indeed, become 

 a most grievous pest in the prairie States, where the cottonwood is largely grown as 

 a shade and ornamental tree, as well as for fuel. We have been surprised, in passing 

 through Kansas and Nebraska more particularly, at the utter devastation which this 

 beetle has produced. Vast groves have been destroyed through its incessant defolia- 



