HOW TO INCREASE THE I'OTATO CROP BV SPRAYIXG, 



]1 



Fig. 12.— Tobacco flea beetle, a/. 

 insect which also attacks potato: 

 a, Adult, or beetle; 6, larva, side 

 view; r, pupa from below. 



place the poison about the plants before night, which is the time wIkmi 

 the cutworms are active. Apply a second time if necessar3^ If this 

 mash is made up with loss water it may be applied with a grain or 

 fertilizer drill to good advantage.* 



Caution (see p. 8). — Arsenic and Paris green are deadly ]>()is()ns. 

 Handle them with great care. Keep chil- 

 dren, live stock, and ])oultry away from 

 this bait. 



LEAFHOPPERS AND PLANT-LICE. 

 Leaf hoppers sometimes are very injurious 

 to potatoes. The bean leaf hopper, ^ a small 

 green insect (fig. 14), has been described 

 as "probably our worst all-around leaf- 

 hopper pest, so exceedingly abmidant that 

 notwithstanding its varied diet it is able to 

 make serious attack on quite a number of 

 cultivated plants on its list." Among its 

 chief food plants are potatoes, sugar beets, 

 beans, cowpeas, celery, currants, and apple 

 and other trees. From its abmidance on the 

 apple it is known as the apple leafhopper. 

 During the year 1914 the Bureau of Ento- 

 mology received information from Pennsylvania and New York 

 that this species was the cause of a "bhght." Samples of the 

 injured leaves had the appearance of having been burned and scalded, 

 but the dead leaves showed no evidence of early-blight, and the evi- 

 dence was strong that injury was 

 due to the bean leafhopper or the 

 potato aphis, ^ or both, in the 

 States mentioned, as no other 

 insects were observed at that 

 time, not even the Colorado 

 potato beetle. Fortunately, 

 both insects were destroyed by 

 storms on Long Island and in 

 New Jersey, New England, Ponn- 

 S3dvania, and the upper Hudson 

 Eiver region of New York. 



During the year 1917 the 

 spinach ai^his * became extremely 

 abundant, its ravages extending from the Gulf region northward to 

 New England and westward to Illinois and Mhmesota. The principal 



1 Additional information ^vith regard to cutworms may be obtained upon application to the Bureau 

 of Entomology, U. S. Department of Agriculture 



2 Empoas:i mali LeB. 



3 MaCTOsiphum solanifolHAshm. 

 ■ * Myzus pcrsicx Sulz. 



Fig. 13.— Granulated cutworm, an injurious potato 

 insect: Moth above; cutworm, or larva, below. 

 Somewhat enlarged. 



