THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



89 



as beneath their attention, objects which — however 

 minute they may be — aimually pick the pockets of 

 our American farmers of hundreds of millions of 

 dollars. 



Rock Island, III., June 15, 1866. 



ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. 



BY B. D. WALSH, M. A. — Associate Editor. 



j?E§~ITotice.— Through the fault of Uncle Sam's Post- 

 office, answers to correspondents — whom and how many I 

 cannot tell — have miscarried between Illinois and Phila- 

 delphia. Those that find their communications unno- 

 ticed, will, therefore, please repeat them. 



Thos. C. Wright, Ohio. — The insects sent, which had 

 bored extensively into seasoned Hickory wood, are the 

 same Painted Borer (Chjtuspictun) as I figured in my Ar- 

 ticle on Borers, (P. E. No. 4, p. 29), only it is the male 

 which is there figured, and. the specimens you send are 

 both females, and consequently have much shorter an- 

 tennre. They belong to the Order of Beetles, { Coleoptcra), 

 not to the Order of Bugs, (Seteroptera), as you conjecture, 

 and have the usual transformations of their Order. The 

 specimens sent reached Philadelphia alive and kicking, 

 but were dead when I received them five days after- 

 wards. 



H. B. Howarth, Wisc.^ — The insects you now send are 

 not the true Chinch-bugs, though they belong to the same 

 family, (Lj/gaidce), and have nearly the same habits. The 

 Chinch-Bug is mostly black, with his back whitish, and a 

 very conspicuous pair of black spots placed crosswise on 

 it; those sent are of a uniform greenish-gray color with 

 no conspicuous markings. This species is very common 

 and abundant, but so far as I am aware, has not been as 

 yet named and described. In size and shape it resembles 

 the Chinch-bug; but the coloring is very different. 

 About half of what you sent were winged, and in the per- 

 fect or full-grown state : the rest were the same insect in 

 the larva or baby state. I have never known this spe- 

 cies breed in excessive numbers, as the Chinch-Bug com- 

 monly does ; but no doubt, in proportion to their numbers, 

 they are equally destructive to vegetation. 



Chaa. H. W. Wood, Mass. — Thanks for the Cankerworms 

 which reached me in good order, considering that they 

 were four days on the road. You say of these Canker- 

 worms that the principal trouble is to keep the full grown 

 or growing worms from the trees, and that the protectors 

 or tar stops the females from ascending. But these ''full- 

 grown or growing- worms" must have been hatched on 

 the trees; else what did they live on before they were 

 full-grown? I take it that they are individuals that have 

 been blown off the trees by the wind or washed ofl' by 

 the rain, and afterwards re-ascend by the trunk. The 

 real trouble, as I apprehend, is, that you don't apply your 

 tarred bandages early enough in the season. Many fe- 

 males of this species come out in November, or on fine 

 warm days through the winter; and to stop these from 

 climbing the trees the tar must be attended to from the 

 end of the autumn every fine spell through the winter. 

 It is true this is a deal of trouble; but if done effectually 

 and thoroughly one season in any neighborhood, you an- 

 nihilate your foe for a dozen years to come. Recollect 

 that the female is wingless, and cannot migrate at plea- 

 sure into your orchard from the other end of the County, 

 like the winged female moth of the common "Cater- 

 pillar." 



I do not believe that the male Cankerworm moth, when 

 coupled with the female, would ever fly into trees, so as 

 to give the female a chance to lay her eggs there. Butter- 

 flies and Dragon-flies (Snake-feeders and Devil's darning- 

 needles) commonly fly coupled, but I never saw any 

 moth do so. It requires very strong and robust wings to 

 carry double in this manner. 



Chas. Cook, Mass. — Dr. Clemens writes me word that the 

 small moth produced from your cocoons is not, as I had 

 supposed, undescribed. It is his Bucculatrix pomifohella, 

 described by him several years back, and the larva feeds 

 on the leaves of apple-trees, as indeed the name indi- 

 cates. 



M. v. B. Hathaway, Vermont. — You inquire "what is 

 the name and character of the insect which deposits froth 

 resembling spittle upon grass in spring." It belongs to 

 the Order Homoptera, the Family Cercopidas and the genua 

 Aphrophora, which in English means "foam-bearer." 

 Near Rock Island we have three species, the i-notata of 

 Say, and the quadrangwlaris of Say, which are both pretty 

 common and resemble each other pretty closely, and the 

 bibncata of Say which is rare; besides the obtusa of Say 

 and the Proteus of Fitch which are now referred to a dif- 

 ferent genus— CTasto;)(era— with different habits. The 

 "froth" you speak of is caused by the young larva 

 pumping out through the pores of its body the sap of the 

 plant on which it feeds, and no doubt answers the pur- 

 pose of concealing it from birds, cannibal insects, Ac. 

 You will always find a single larva in the middle of 

 the froth, wingless of course, or with mere rudiments of 

 wings; the perfect insect having full-sized wings. The 

 ancients believed that this froth was "cuckoo-spit," and 

 our French and English ancestors called it " frog-spittle," 

 supposing of course that the tree-frogs voided it from 

 their mouths. I have noticed this "froth" very abun- 

 dant 00 the Red Osier Dogwood, (Cornus,) but which spe- 

 cies of Aphrophora infests that shrub, I do not know, 

 having never bred the perfect insect from the spittle. I 

 never saw any " froth " upon " grass," as you say you 

 have; but likely enough you may have a different spe- 

 cies in Vermont from any found in Illinois. You could 

 easily breed the perfect insect by placing the infested grass- 

 plant in a pot of earth, and covering it with musketo-bar. 

 But mind how you handle him, when he comes out in the 

 perfect state, for he jumps like any flea; as indeed do all 

 the Homopterous insects belong to the Ccrcopis and Telti- 

 gonia and Membracis families — or as they have been call- 

 ed in English the "Frog-hoppers," the "Leaf-hoppers," 

 and the "Tree-hoppers." I have read somewhere that 

 Clastnptera Protois (of Fitch), which is prettily marked 

 with black and gamboge-yellow, is a great pest upon 

 cranberry vines in the East; but it must attack other 

 plants as well, for it is very common near Rock Island 

 where there are no cranberry vines. 



E. Hall. Athens, 111. — The insects you send are indeed 

 the true, highly-improved, new Potato-bug, and Athens 

 being so far in the interior of the State, the fact that they 

 had already reached it a year ago is a confirmation of 

 what I asserted last spring, viz: — that they would travel 

 eastward at the rate of about fifty miles a year till they 

 reached the Atlantic. There are two kinds of beetles that 

 infest the Sweet Potato, one of a gold color, and the 

 other striped with pale yellow and black. Both belong 

 to the family of Tortoise-beetles, I Cassida,) so called from 

 their flatness, and are, as you infer, pretty closely allied 

 to the new Potato Bug. The pink ladybirds with black 

 spots that you send, and which you say destroy the eggs 

 of the Potato-bug, are ^Sippodamm -maculata — one of the 

 most useful friends the farmer has, for he is death on 

 bark-lice, on chinch-bugs, and on Potato-bug's eggs. 

 Several other kinds of Ladybirds also, to my knowledge, 

 feed on Potato-bug's eggs. 



Although, as you say, the Potato-bug first appeared 

 with you last year on Solanum triflorum, a plant that 

 you have been growing from Rocky Mountain seed since 

 1863, yet you could not have imported it along with the 

 seed, because the seed must of course have been gathered 

 in the fall, and this insect's eggs, if gathered in the fall, 

 would not live till the following spring. Soriie insects 

 indeed pass the winter in the egg state, the common 

 "Caterpillar" of the apple-tree for examjjle, but this is 

 not one of them. 



0. B. Douglas, Vermont. — The plum with some mons- 

 trosity in its development arrived in such a shrivelled 

 state that I can make nothing of it. The small " bunches 

 or sacks" attached to a twig are very remarkable and 

 quite new to me. They contain eggs and are made by 

 some insect or other — or possibly some spider — and that 

 is all I can say about them. I have found on the White 

 Oak numerous "bunches or sacks" likewise containing 

 eggs, but dift'ering from yours in being smoothly globular 

 and of a cream-color, freckled with brown. 



Prof, Sheldon. Iowa. — The moth you send is a fine male 

 of the common Currant Borer, (^geria tipuliformis,) of 

 which a figure was given in the P. E.,p. 29, together with 

 a short notice by myself of its habits. 



