64: COLORADO POTATO BEETLE. 



tion, devoting whole fields of our most vahiable esculent to its 

 uses — at least, it has not hesitated to appropriate them thus — and 

 adorning it with our most brilliant pigments. But having, in ac- 

 cordance with the old adage, " Welcomed the coming," we are 

 now quite willing to ''6pee4.j:he parting guest." To tell the plain 

 truth, our visitors from Colorado, with their enormous families, 

 have got to be an intolerable bore. In no former years have the 

 complaints of their depredations been so loud and so universal; 

 the hot and dry summer having evidently been favorable to their 

 multiplication. 



I have heard of a few localities, both in Iowa and Illinois, where 

 these insects were numerous last year, but have nearly or quite 

 disappeared this year, giving us a gleam of hope for the future. 

 But such cases, the past season, I believe to have been rare and 

 exceptional, and we have reason to be not a little suspicious that 

 our visitors from the Rocky Mountain country will prove to be- 

 long to that class of friends alluded to by the poet in the following 

 stanza : 



" I do not tremble when I meet 

 The stoutest of my foes ; 

 But Heaven defend my from the friend 

 Who comes — but never goes." 



In our dilemma, the question then is, what can we do to expe- 

 dite their departure ? 



In the first place mother Nature has come to our relief, to a cer- 

 tain extent, and has sent a host of assistants to aid us in the task. 

 We can now enumerate at least nineteen different kinds of insects 

 which prey upon the Colorado Potato-beetle. We give their 

 names below, numbering for the purpose of reference : 



COLEOPTERA, 



