7% 
136 ANNUAL REPORT. une 
Mr. Jewell. Mr. Pearce’s statement is correct. Often the 
blackening which we see does no harm. There may, bi be 
disease there. 7 dike 
My ; 
‘ REPORT OF MR. HARRIS ON INSECTS, &0. ee 
“eg 
The reports of J. S. Harris, Esq., La Crescent, on Insects In- 
festing House Plants and on General Fruit were read and ordered 
on file for publication. 
They were as follows: 
Mr. President and Gentlemen of State Horticultura. Society: 
The study of the habits and instincts of a few small and insignificant 
insects or ‘‘ bugs,” as they are most usually termed, appears to many people 
to be a matter of so trifling importance as to be unworthy the attention of 
any man of common sense; and yet a thorough knowledge of the science 
of entomology or bugs, is of vast importance to those who till the soil for 
aliving. There is no useful fruit, grain, plant, or vegetable that has not its 
insect enemies, and in this State alone the annual damage done by them to 
the growing crops will doubtless exceed a million dollars, and they are con- 
stantly ontheincrease. Their name might appropriately be called ‘‘Legion,” 
and with the exception of one single species—the Colorado potato beetle— 
who can tell us how to head them off? Doubtless if all of our insect ene- 
mies were as well known as the above named beetle, and had been subjected 
to such irrepressible conflict, much of this immense damage could be pre- 
vented. ; 
I am but a young student in the science, and in this paper will risk my 
reputation only on a few insects that are injurious to flower and ornamental 
plants that are kept in green houses, conservatories and parlors, taking only 
those which are most common and giving the remedies that, in my own 
experience, have proved the best. 
Aphis rosea, (of the natural order of Hemiptera,) 
Or what is usually known as green fly, or green plant lice, infest nearly 
all plants that are cultivated both in and out of doors, and if left unmolested 
are particularly destructive to free-growing plants like monthly roses, 
scented geraniums, calceolarias, verbenas, &c., when kept in the house. 
The young lice, extremely minute and of a greenish color, when full-grown 
they are about one-tenth of an inch in length, and usually of a dark green 
color; but the color varies somewhat, according to the plants they are feed- 
ing upon. The older insects frequently have wings. On the plants kept in 
the house the female produces her young alive, but some naturalists state 
that on trees and plants growing out of doors the females, late in the fall, 
produce eggs for the generation of next spring. This is doubtless so, for 
a very little freezing kills the mature insect. They attack the young grow- 
