8 FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT OF 



Louis, and of the damage done to the crop by this one insect, I showed, in 

 a lecture delivered before the Kansas State Agricultural College, that this 

 one pest had abstracted nearly $500,000 from the pockets of our farmers 

 during that year. No insignificant sum to be sneered at, and well worth 

 saving when the means are at hand ! 



New Territory invaded. — In the fall of 1870 the northern columns 

 of the great army, in its eastward march, had reached the Canadian border 

 and made their way some little distance into the Dominion. In the spring 

 of 1871 the Detroit river was literally swarming with the beetles and they 

 were crossing Lake Erie on ships, chips, staves, boards or any other float- 

 ing object which j^resented itself. They soon infested all the islands to the 

 west of the Lake and by June were common around London, and finally 

 occupied the whole country between the St. Clair and Niagara rivers. 



It would be difiicult to indicate, with any degree of exactness, the pre- 

 cise eastern limit they have attained in the States j but it can be confidently 

 stated that they have reached in some places the borders of New York and 

 Pennsylvania. Sjjecimens of dried larvae were sent to Mr. A. S. Fuller of 

 the Rural New Yorker, from Martinsburgh, N. Y., but he was not able to 

 decide positively whether they were the genuine Colorado article or the 

 Three-lined Potato beetle (Eep. I. Fig. 42). They were also reported during 

 the summer to have obtained a foot-hold in Massachusetts, as the following 

 item from the New England Farmer will show : 



" Hon. M. P. Wilder informs us that this long dreaded scourge of the 

 potato field has been found in the town of Worcester, whither it probably 

 stole a ride on the cars of the western railroad, or was introduced hj some 

 carpet-bagger. We understood Mr. Wilder that the State Board of Agri- 

 culture were contemplating the adoption of some action with a view to 

 ' stamping out ' the pest. We are not informed as to the extent of the foot- 

 hold the insect has secured, but we should certainlj^ advise a most earnest 

 endeavor by hand picking, by poison, by fire, and by every means in their 

 power, to check its further extension in our State." 



But I am able to say, with sufficient assurance, that no foundation what- 

 ever existed for the rumor, and that the Three-lined species was here the 

 innocent cause of alarm. While visiting Prof. Gl-eo. Thurber of the Ameri- 

 can Agriculturist, I learned that he himself had unintentionally started the 

 rumor by mistaking certain dried S-lineata for the genuine 10-lineata 

 larvae. 



I have already given it as my opinion that nothing will stay its onward 

 march. There was a possible chance of keeping it out of Ontario, but that 

 is now lost. It might perhaps be stayed for a time, if, by some edict, no 

 potatoes were allowed to be grown for several years within a belt of one 

 hundred miles east of the district at jiresent infested. But we do not live 

 in the time of edicts, and the chances of its getting across such a belt by one 

 way or another would always be great. So I expect this irresistible army 

 to march on. Indeed it is quite possible that even the broad Atlantic may 

 not stay its course; but that when once the beetles swarm in the streets of 

 New York as the}- did in those of St. Louis last spring, some female, loaded 



