INJURIOUS INSECTS 127 
accused of gnawing young shoots beneath the surface, 
causing them to become woody and crooked in growth. 
The beetle illustrated in Fig. 42 is a most beautiful 
creature—from the entomologist’s point of view 
slender and graceful in form, blue-black in color, with 
red thorax and lemon-yellow and dark blue elytra or 
FIG. 42—COMMON ASPARAGUS BEETLE 
a, beetle; 46, egg; c, newly hatched larva; d, full-grown larva 
wing covers, with reddish border. Its length is a 
trifle less than one-fourth of an inch. 
From the scene of its first colonization in Queen’s 
County, N. Y., the insect migrated to the other truck- 
growing portions of Long Island. It soon reached 
southern Connecticut, and has now extended its range 
northward through Massachusetts to New Hampshire. 
Southward it has traveled through New Jersey, where 
it was first noticed in 1868, to southern Virginia. At 
present it is well established in the principal asparagus- 
growing sections of New England, of New Jersey, 
