COLORADO POTATO-BEETLE. 71 



a curious, fact that these ravenous insects seem to be exclusively 

 appropriated to the natural family of Solanaoece or the Night- 

 shade family, upon all the species of which they will feed to some 

 extent. 



This family includes, in addition to the Potato, the Tomato the 

 Egg-plant, the Bitter-sweet, the Black Night- shade, the Horse- 

 nettle, the Ground-cherry, the Thorn-apple, the Henbane, the 

 Tobacco, wild and cultivated, the Box-thorn, and the Cayenne Pep- 

 per. Upon two of these plants, the Egg-plant and the Horse- 

 nettle, these insects feed as readily as they do upon the potato, 

 but upon all or most of the others they eat sparingly and only 

 from necessity. We sometimes hear of them eating other plants, 

 and I have seen the Thistle and other plants slightly gnawed by 

 them when on their march for more congenial food, but it is only 

 as an act of desperation. The Thorn-apple, or Apple of Peru, 

 they will eat more freely, but they do not like it; and the Cay- 

 enne Pepper, if eaten to any considerable extent, is fatal to them. 

 Mr. Ellsworth, jr. , of the Naperville nursery, informed me that 

 he had several times found the bugs lying dead under the pepper 

 plants upon which they had been feeding. Now it is evident that 

 all the plants above enumerated are too rare in locality, and too 

 small in quantity to afford subsistence, to any considerable extent, 

 to such a prolific and multitudinous species as the Colorado Po- 

 tato-beetle; and there can be no doubt that in such a season as 

 the present, in many localities, millions of these insects must have 

 perished for want of food. And though there will probably be 

 enough left to continue the breed, yet they will be so much re- 

 duced in numbers that their presence will hardly be noticed for 

 years to come. And, besides, in proportion, as their numbers are 

 reduced, they will become sulject to the depredations of preda- 

 ceous and parasitic foes. 



In such ways as these does Nature come to our relief ,from the 

 indefinite encroachment of the many noxious insects to whose de- 

 predations we are exposed, and says to the advancing tide, with 

 more authority than did Canute, of old : " Thus far shalt thou 

 come, and no farther. " 



I think there is no doubt that we could avail ourselves of the 

 starvation process to exterminate the Colorado Potato beetle, if 

 this insect should prove to be of a sufficiently persistent character 



