14 SECOND REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



trees in the neighborhood, and that most of the farmers were com- 

 pelled to purchase plums for their family use, from a locality where 

 they were abundant, on "the ridge " or near Lake Ontario ten miles to 

 the northward. The curculio attack had been increasing for several years, 

 and was quite serious the preceding year. Almost every farm of one 

 hundred acres had from five to twenty acres of apple orchard, kept in 

 permanent pasture, yet but little fruit could survive the combined at- 

 tacks of the codling-moth, the canker-worm, the tent-caterpillar, the cur- 

 culio, et cet., unless stock was kept in the orchards to feed the grass 

 closely and pick up the fallen fruit. 



The earliest attacked apples, fell to the ground with the contained 

 curculio larvae. The later ones, it was thought, remained upon the 

 trees. 



Upon the 8th of July, Prof. Charles H. Peck, sent to me from Peters- 

 burg, Rensselaer county, N. Y., examples of the plum weevil, Conotra- 

 chelus nenuphar, with specimens of the apples in which he found it 

 ovipositing. In some cases, it had oviposited in nearly all the apples 

 upon a tree, causing many of them to fall to the ground. 



Phytonomus punctatus Feeding on Beans. 



Examples of this beetle were brought to me on July 2d, by Mr. J. F. 

 Rose, of South Byron, Genesee Co., N. Y., which had been given 

 to him by a farmer in that town with the statement that they were feed- 

 ing in large numbers, upon the leaves of some field beans, and were 

 rapidly destroying the crop. Mr. Rose knew the beetles to be abund- 

 ant in localities in the town, and that they had been quite destructive to 

 clover, for during the month of June of last year (1883), he had seen in 

 a clover field that had been turned under for fertilizing, the larvse so 

 numerous on the surface of the ground the morning after the plowing 

 that he was able to count fifty within the area of a square foot. 



As the beetle had not been recorded as feeding upon beans, it was 

 desirable that this first report of a new food-plant should be verified, 

 before accepting it; yet as the clover and the bean both belong to the 

 Leguminosce, it did not seem improbable that with clover not convenient 

 of access, the insect might transfer itself to some other genus of the 

 order. 



In compliance with the request made, Mr. Rose, upon his return 

 home visited the field in which the beetles were reported as eating the 

 bean leaves, and found them actively engaged in the work. Under date 

 of July 14th, he wrote as follows : 



I send you by this mail specimens of the beans eaten by the clover- 

 leaf beetle together with some of the beetles taken from the beans. Mr. 



