113 



Wasps in India. 



A tin truok belonging to Mrs. Sidney PresLou, wife of a gentleman in Her Majesty's 

 civil service, was packed with wearing apparel, etc., iu Hoti Murdau, and brought 

 to Jhelum, Punjab, India, in March, 1889. It was left in a veranda for two mouths 

 and opened in May. It contained, to the surprise of the owner, four large nests of 

 wasps, the ordinary Vespa of the district. A small hole was at last discovered near 

 the hinge, affording a possible clue to the entrance of the parent or parents. One of 

 the nests was so large as entirely to fill up a baby's hood. After getting rid of the 

 paper-like nests and the living wasps, which were numerous, the remaindt^r of the 

 clothing in the box was found to be covered with dead wasps in quantities; in fiict, 

 with several hundred of them. The contents of the box had been carefully cam- 

 phored and peppered when iiacked.— [A. O'D. Taylor, Newport, E.I. 



Injurious Insects iu New Mexico. 



I have forwarded to you by same mail this day a square tin box containing inclosed 

 two small boxes. The larger square box contains a number of specimens of the bean 

 or frijole bug, also two small pupaj of the same insect, and further, a single specimen 

 of a bug said by the sender to prey on his grape-vines. Having no means of killing 

 the insects I forward them as I received them, most of them alive. In the small 

 round box you will find a few specimens of another bug resembling the first some- 

 what iu its markings and general shape, but larger and evidently a different insect. 

 These are all dead, and were collected by myself personally on a plaut of the Convol- 

 vulus or Ipomiea family, near Bernalillo, iu the Rio Grande Valley. Not having a 

 Gray's Manual I am unable to give the plant its name in botany. It is named by the 

 Mexicans, calabaza (gourd) on account of its enormous root, which is supposed to re- 

 semble a large, warty species of native gourd. Its flowers, of a i^ale purple color, 

 resemble very large morning-glories. The plant, which is found in all New Mexico, 

 but especially iu the sandy wastes which border the valley proper of the Eio Grande 

 River, is an upright bush with long, narrow leaves. The stems aud leaves die out 

 every year, but the root is perennial, and must live many years, for it becomes very 

 hard and woody. The seeds resemble those of the morning-glory, but are much 

 larger. I have described this j)lant so particularly because the larger of the two 

 species of bugs, which is of a paler color and with fewer aud less marked black dots 

 (the one in the small round box), is found in large quantities ou the jilant ; aud the 

 Mexicans have an idea, whether correct or not (of this I am no judge because I am 

 not an entomologist), that the frijole chinch (the smaller bug in the square box), 

 which is the destructive bug that preys on the beans, originates from the other. 



The convolvulus bug appears early in the spriug ; I gathered it ou the plants my- 

 self in May. The Bean bug appears in July. Although I felt satisfied that the two 

 insects are different, aud that a bug that preys ou the Convolvulus family could not 

 equally prey on beans, I thought this matter of sutficient interest, aud brought a 

 handful of convolvulus bugs, which I put in the midst of a small patch of beans 

 growing in the garden, but within ten minutes they had all left, and for two weeks 

 I looked carefully through the beans, but never saw a bug of any kind on them. The 

 Bean bug commits great depredations on bean fields, often destroying them entirely. 

 The only means the Mexicans have found to somewhat prevent its ravages is to plaut 

 their beans late, about the middle of July, the bug appearing to swarm in smaller 

 numbers later iu the season. The chief season of the Mexican beau bug seems to be 

 from the middle of July to the first of September. The Phaseolus grown by the Mex- 

 icans belongs to the same family as our string beans ; the pod can be eaten as a string 

 bean, aud the bean is of a yellowish brownish color, of ordinary size, somewhat flat- 

 ish. When cooked and prepared in the Mexican way it is the best beau I have ever 

 eaten, far superior aud better flavored than our so-called uavy bean, and it would be 



