340 ANNUAL REPORT. 



the vegetable garden, the fruit field and the nursery. It has 

 hitherto seemed one of the most difficult to deal with on the books 

 of the economic entomologist, and those who have had most 

 experience with it have had least hopes of combatting it success- 

 fully, but some recent experiments, made with a view to arresting 

 its ravages in strawberry fields, have resulted favorably, and I 

 think that it can be brought under economical control. 



DESCRIPTION". 



It is a hemipterous insect, and consequently has a pointed beak, 

 with which it pierces the tissues of the plants upon which it feeds, 

 but cannot " bite," in the proper sense of that word. This is a 

 fact, of course, to be borne in mind in discussing modes of attack 

 upon it. 



The adult, or winged form, is about a fifth of an inch long, by 

 half that width, oval, yellow, or greenish yellow, and more or less 

 striped or mottled with dusky brown. It is extremely variable in 

 color, but the most constant marks are five longitudinal white lines 

 on the thorax (often reduced to spots, which then occupy the 

 front margin), a white y-shaped mark on the scutellum, which is 

 sometimes broken into other white points arranged in a triangle, 

 and a white blotch, tipped with black, near the end of the wing 

 covers. 



The young are much less variegated than the adult and more 

 distinctly green. In all but the first stage they may be distin- 

 guished by the presence of five black dots upon the back, arranged 

 in a pentagonal form. 



HABITS AND LIFE-HISTORY. 



The old bugs winter under rubbish upon the ground, emerge 

 early in spring, cluster upon the unfolding buds of fruit trees, the 

 fresh foliage of strawberries and other early vegetation, and there 

 lay their eggs, old and young together, draining these succulent, 

 growing parts of sap. The effect is to arrest the development of 

 the leaves, and even to wither and kill them, so that in an infested 

 nursery the young trees will look as if scathed by fire. There is 

 considerable reason to suppose that these insects are often active 

 agents in conveying the virus of the blight of the pear and apple 

 from tree to tree by inocculation with the infected sap. The straw- 

 berry, the raspberry and the blackberry are all attacked, the first 



