OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 11 



THE COLOllADO POTATO BEETLE. 



This insect has contiuued its ravages, but no longer inspires our 

 well-informed farmers with the dread it was wont to. The remedy for 

 its injuries is so very generally known, and so practicable and certain 

 of good results, if properly applied, that the presence of the pest in 

 our midst has lost its threatening character. Yet a great many per- 

 sons in the States to the north of us must either have become dis- 

 couraged, or have failed in the cultivation of potatoes, which have 

 reached as high as $2.00 per bushel (wholesale) in the St. Louis mar- 

 ket. Indeed, the present scarcity and consequent high price of pota- 

 toes, all over the country, has very generally been attributed to 

 the fact that the beetle discouraged so many from planting. There 

 was a time, and that but a few years since, when the potato was one 

 of the cheapest and surest products of the farm, and furnished not 

 only the most wholesome and palatable article of human food, but en- 

 tered largely into the feed of all kinds of stock. At the ordinary 

 restaurant, one could always depend on a good mealy potato, if noth- 

 ing else invited to satisfy hunger. To-day the rot, and more especially 

 the Colorado Potato-beetle, not to mention other enemies, have made 

 it one of the most precarious of crops, as well as one of the most ex- 

 pensive to raise. It is no longer fed to stock, and many a family was 

 this winter deprived of its use, as a luxury that could not be afforded. 

 Under the attacks of its numerous enemies, animal and vegetal, it 

 has also degenerated, and instead of the mealy deliciousness of for- 

 mer years, it presents too often a soggy, watery and unwholesome 

 appearance at the table. This state of things may, doubtless, in a 

 great measure be remedied by cultivating the newer and more vigor- 

 ous seedlings, and by more care in mastering our coleopterous immi- 

 grant from Colorado. 



XEW FOOL) PLANTS. 



Mr. Henry Gillman, of Detroit, Michigan, adds to the list of its food 

 plants, several new species on which, in one state or another, he found 

 it feeding.* I quote the following from a letter in which he recounted 

 to me these observations, with the remark that the fact of finding the 

 eggs on a plant, or the insect sparingly nibbling the same, does not 

 prove that it could live and thrive on such plant, as a species, any 

 more than the fact that a cow at times partakes sparingly of animal 

 food proves that she could sustain life on a flesh diet. Yet the facts 

 communicated by Mr. Gillman are interesting, as showing the ten- 



*Am. Naturalist VII., p. 430. 



