36 FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT OP 



Plant-lice covered with a whitish dust (Ap?iis brassicce) — and the leaves them- 

 selves are riddled full of holes by the tiny larva of the Cabbage Tinea 

 (Plutella cruciferarum), or devoured bodily by large fleshy larvae of the differ- 

 ent OAvlet moths or of the white butterflies that were treated of in my second 

 Report. 



Severe as are these inflictions upon the northern cabbage-grower^ 

 there is an insect found in the Southern States that aj)j)ears to be, if possi- 

 ble, still worse. This is the Harlequin Cabbage-bug, so called from the gay 

 theatrical harlequin-like manner in which the black and orange-yellow colors 

 are arranged upon its body. The first account of the opei-ations of this 

 very pretty but unfortunately very mischievous bug appeared in the year 

 1866, from the able pen of Dr. Gideon Lincecum, of Washington county, 

 Texas, and was j)rinted in the Practical Entomologist (Vol. I. p. 110). His 

 remarks are to the following effect : 



The year before last they got into my garden, and utterly destroyed 

 my cabbage, radishes, mustard, seed turnips, and every other cruciform 

 plant. Last year I did not set any of that Order of plants in my garden. But 

 the present year, thinking the bugs had probably left the premises, I planted 

 my garden with radishes, mustard, and a variety of cabbages. By the first 

 of April the mustard and radishes were large enough for use, and I discov- 

 ered that the insect had commenced on them. I began picking them off by 

 hand and tramping them under foot. By that means I have preserved my 

 ■iS4: cabbages, but I have visited ever}^ one of them daily now for four 

 months, finding on them from thirty-five to sixty full-grown insects every 

 day, some coupled and some in the act of depositing their eggs. Although 

 many have been hatched in my garden the present season, 1 have suffered 

 none to come to maturity ; and the daily supplies of grown insects that I 

 have been blessed with, are immigrants from some other garden. 



The perfect insect lives through the winter, and is ready to deposit its 

 eggs as early as the 15th of March, or sooner, if it finds any cruciform plant 

 large enough. They set their eggs on end in two rows, cemented together, 

 mostly on the underside of the leaf, and generally from eleven to twelve in 

 number. In about six days in April — four days in July — there hatches out 

 from these eggs a brood of lai*va3 resembling the perfect insect, except in 

 having no wings. This brood immediately begins the work of destruction 

 by piercing and sucking the life-saj) from the leaves ; and in twelve days 

 they have matured. They are timid, and will run off and hide behind the 

 first leaf-stem, or any part of the plant that will answer the purpose. The 

 leaf that they ])uncture immediately wilts, like the eftects of poison, and 

 soon withers. Half a dozen grown insects will kill a cabbage in a day. 

 They continue through the summer, and sufficient perfect insects survive 

 the winter to insure a full crop of them for the coming season. 



This tribe of insects do not seem liable to the attacks of any of the can- 

 nibal races, either in the egg state or at any other stage. Our birds pay no 

 attention to them, neither will the domestic fowls touch them. I have, as 

 yet, found no way to get clear of them, but to pick them off by hand. 



To give some idea of their numbers in Texas, Mr. Benj. R. Townsend, 

 of Austin, in that State, wrote me, under date of February 28, 1870, that he 

 had, within a few daj^s, gathered 47,000 of the bugs. 



In September, 1870, I received from William E. Howard a single speci- 

 men of this bug, which was found depositing her eggs near Forsyth, in 



