381 



the process of dipping. It is wliile the linen lies in these heaps that 

 the injury is done. The larv;e unquestionably have crawled upon the 

 underside of the linen while it was stretched upon the grass and have 

 been gathered up with it. At night, being hungry and being confined 

 in the heap of linen and under [)ressure, they act just as they would 

 when underground, using their strong jaws to gnaw through the cloth. 

 The remedy proposed by Mr. L. M. Ewart, who investigated the sub- 

 ject and who was Mr. Barrett's informant, was to place the cloth di- 

 rectly in the dip after removing it from the grass, as no damage seems 

 to have been done at any other time except when the cloth was piled 

 in a heap, never when it is spread upon the grass. As a matter of 

 course a thorough shaking of the cloth would answer the same purpose. 

 Curiously enough the larvie were found to stand immersion in the dip 

 (a weak solution of chloride of lime) for several hours without apparent 

 injury. 



IMPRESSION OF AN INSECT IN PAPER. 



A curious case of an impression of an insect in a piece of pa^jer has 

 recently come to our notice. Mr. John R. Giles, vice president and gen- 

 eral manager of the Giles Lithographic and Liberty Printing Company 

 of Xew York, has sent ns a piece of transfer paper of rice manufacture 

 made in India, which contains a most perfect impression of a species of 

 Lithobius, a genus allied to the Centipedes. All partsof the insect are 

 readily discernible, and it is incorporated in the substance of the paper 

 and forms a part of it. The specimen was no doubt accidentally en- 

 trapped in the pulp while the paper was in the process of manufacture, 

 and passed unnoticed through the rollers in the subsequent stages of 

 drying. 



THE DESTRUCTIVE LEAF HOPPER INJURINQ TIMOTHY, 



Our former Missouri agent, Mr. J. G. Barlow, writes us under date of 

 April 29 that some Timothy meadows in the vicinity of Cadet are infested 

 by millions of small, dark-colored leaf-hoppers, specimens sent proving to 

 be Cicadula exitiosa. They have already injured the grass to a consid- 

 erable extent, and though so numerous are difficult to capture except 

 by sweeping, on account of their extreme shyness and agility. This 

 species was described by Uhler in the third volume of the American 

 Entomologist, page 72. There is also an account on page 78 of the 

 same volume of their infesting wheat fields in myriads in Xorth Caro- 

 lina from October, 1879, to January, 1880. In the Annual Report of 

 this Department for 1879, pages 191 to 193, a full account of the insect 

 and its destructiveness is given and special reference made to the above 

 cases of damage in Xorth Carolina, which were laid to the extreme 

 mildness of the winter of 1879-80. The species has heretofore been 

 noticed as injurious oul^' to winter wheat, to which Timothy grass may 

 now be added. 



