THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Ill 



ANSWERS TO COREESPONDENTS. 



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



Benj. Borden, Penna. — The small yellowish or very pale 

 green, 16-footed caterpillars, about i inch long, with two 

 white stripes and occasionally five rows of small irregu- 

 lar blackish spots placed lengthways on their backs, must 

 be the larvse of some species of Procris. You say they are 

 very numerous and destructive on your grape-vines, de- 

 ■»ouring the whole leaf "except the fine gauze-like frame- 

 work." Two or three of them spun up on the road, form- 

 ing an oval whitish cocoon in the fold of a leaf. Procris 

 amcricana has been long known to attack the grape-vine 

 in this country, but the description of its larva does not 

 quite agree with your insect, and besides it is too large 

 a moth to come from so small a larva. I suspect that your 

 insect will turn out to be the Procris (acoloithus)falsarius of 

 Clemens, which has been redescribed by Dr. Packard as 

 jSarrisina Sanborni, and which Dr. Clemens tells me is 

 quite common in Pennsylvania, and I myself know to be 

 quite common in Illinois. There is a European species, 

 Procris viiis, which has long been known to be very de- 

 Btruetive to the grape-vine in Italy. Tlie dillereut spe- 

 cies of Procris are in the winged state, black moths, with 

 long narrow black wings and generally an orange-colored 

 band behind the head. Unlike most other moths, they fly 

 in broad day-light, and in the hottest sun are found upon 

 flowers. Your larvse, although they were four days on the 

 road, arrived all alive and kicking, and in first-rate order, 

 , thanks to the tight little tin box in which you enclosed 

 them, and which has the additional merit of keeping the 

 leaves on which they feed perfectly fresh. The moths 

 which I hope to breed from them will not appear till 

 next summer, when I will let you know the result. The 

 beetles you send, which you rightfully suspect of eating 

 the vine-leaves, are the very same undescribed species of 

 JiHdia received from Mr. C. S. Jackson of Kentucky. See 

 the answer to that gentleman in Practical Entomologist, 

 No. 10. 



Since the above was in type, I have bred (Aug. 9) sev- 

 eral specimens of the moth from the caterpillars infest- 

 ing your grape-vine, and it turns out to be the very spe- 

 cies of Procris that I expected. Hence it is not improb- 

 able that this insect produces two broods of larvae every 

 year. Your larvje were sent July 19th, so that only 

 three weeks intervened between the larva and the moth 

 states. Towards the middle of August you will perhaps 

 find another lot of caterpillars on your vines. 



J. Cope, Penna. — The yellow oval larvse about J or J an 

 inch long and with sprangling black prickles all over 

 their backs, which you find feeding on the leaves of your 

 Bquashes, and sometimes on the ripe squashes, belong to 

 Epitachna borealis. This is a beetle of the Coccinella Family 

 (Ladybirds), and is very remarkable for being the only 

 known North American species of the Family that feeds 

 upon vegetable substances, though there are several 

 others that do so in Europe. All our other species, so far 

 as is known, feed upon insects, and are very beneficial by 

 checking the undue multiplication of the plant-feeders. 

 Your species, when in the perfect state, may be readily 

 distinguished by being yellow with fourteen large black 

 spots arranged crossways on its wing-cases — 6 and 6 and 

 2. These larvae reached me in good order, but hungry — 

 the leaves having dried up to a crisp. 



"The worm with a dark colored head and a dark spot 

 on the back of its neck, that destroys the Squash and 

 Pumpkin vines by boring into them near the root" must 

 be the larva of Trochilium cucurbitce Harris. If so, it is a 

 whitish worm nearly an inch long when full-grown and 

 with sixteen legs, inclusive of two at its tail. The moth 

 that comes from it has its front wings black and its hind 

 wings clear and glassy. You will find a good colored fi- 

 gure of it in Harris's Inj. Ins. Plate V. fig. 8. The best 

 mode of subduing this pest is to dig out and destroy the 

 larva in every infested vine. Thus you will prevent it 

 from going underground when full-fed, and coming out 

 in the moth state the following season to lay its eggs for 

 the next year's brood. The specimens you sent all bored 

 round holes through the paper wrapper and escaped ; 

 Uncle Sam, however, facilitated their escape by sijueez- 

 ing the pasteboard box that contained them into all man- 

 ner of shapes. I hope sincerely that, when they got loose in 

 the mail-bags, they did not bore their way into some 



love-letter addressed to a j'oung lady of delicate nerves. 

 A tin box is the best to pack larvje in, as it keeps both 

 them and their food fresh and moist. 



Thos. Conard, Penna. — You remark as follows:— "1st. 

 Our potatoes are badly nibbled by some bug or worm and 

 often almost ruined. 2nd. Our wheat this year is only 

 half a crop because of the Wheat Midge; and the same 

 was the case with our oats some years back. 3rd. My 

 squash vines die suddenly, though in the best thrift. 

 Why? 4th. My bees, too, do badly, and do not swarm. 

 Why ?" — Answers. 1st. I suppose it is the larva of the 

 Three-lined Leaf-beetle (Lema trilineata) that is damag- 

 ing your potatoes. If so, you may readily know it by 

 its carrying its own dung on its own back. You will not 

 fiud any now on the leaves, as they have gone under- 

 ground to change into the perfect beetle, but towards the 

 middle or the end of August there will be a second brood 

 of them hatch out from eggs laid by the insects that are 

 now underground. There is no known remedy, but sha- 

 king them off the vines into pans and then destroying 

 them. 2nd. See " answers " to ''R. F., New Jersey " and 

 " M. H. Boye, Penna." in the last number of the Practi- 

 cal Entomologist, p. 101. It could not have been the 

 Wheat Midge that attacked your oats some years ago, be- 

 cause that insect confines itself to Wheat and iRye. Per- 

 haps it was the Grain plant-louse that did the mischief. 

 3rd. I expect your squash vines are bored close to the root 

 by the larva of the Squash Borer ( Trochilium cucurbitcc), 

 respecting which see the "answer" to "J. Cope, Penna." 

 in this number of the Practical Entomologist. 4th. You 

 set me almost as hard a task as was set the prophet 

 Daniel by King Nebuchadnezzar, when he required him 

 to interpret a dream without telling him what the dream 

 was. You give no particulars about your bees, and there- 

 fore it is as impossible for me to tell what ails them, as it 

 would be for a physician in Illinois to tell what ailed your 

 wife, if you wrote to him simply that your wife was not 

 in good health. Haifa hundred things may be the mat- 

 ter with your bees. They may be troubled by the Bee- 

 moth, or they may be robbed by other bees, or it may be 

 a bad season with you for making honey on account of 

 certain flowers fail, or there may have been too many 

 rainy days for your bees, or your hives may be bad or 

 badly situated or near some foul-smelling place, or the 

 impregnation of the queen may have been delayed to the 

 20th day, in which case she always produces nothing but 

 drones, or the queen may be old and worn out, or your 

 hives may have run short of honey last winter, or your 

 neighborhood may be overstocked with bees, »tc., kc. 

 Bees are like other stock — they require constant care and 

 attention, and the treatment must be varied according to 

 the nature of each particular case. 



£. Daggy, 111. — The grape-leaves studded on their low- 

 er surface with scores of green globular bodies, varying 

 from, the size of a radish seed to that of a small pea, and 

 each budding out into sundry little smooth bumps or ex- 

 crescences, are troubled by a particular gall named viti- 

 folia by Dr. Fitch. Like all other galls, this is the work 

 of an insect, not of a plant-louse, however, as Dr. Fitch 

 supposed, but, as I have recently ascertained, of a true 

 bark-louse belonging to the Coccus family. Each globular 

 body is a distinct gall, and it originates by the mother in- 

 sect puncturing the leaf on its upper surface early in the 

 season, which operation being continually repeated in 

 the same spot causes an unnatural hollow lined with 

 white woolly hair. In this hollow the mother-louse takes 

 her station, sucking away at the sap and still further ir- 

 ritating the part, till finally the hollow enlarges, its 

 mouth gradually closes, and you have a green fleshy bag 

 with its mouth tied up pretty tight and the mother- 

 louse inside. If you examPue a leaf full of these galls, 

 you will see on the upper side of the leaf a little woolly 

 place opposite each gall on the lower side of the leaf. 

 This is what remains of the woolly hollow which origi- 

 nated the gall. So far the process, with more or less va- 

 riation in each case, is nearly the same with the plant- 

 lice that make galls, numbers of which have been long 

 known to Entomologists, and with the Barklice that make 

 galls, of which I am now acquainted with three species. 

 One of these species is the aforesaid viti/olia of Fitch, 

 v/hich I find on the wild Vitis cordifolia and on the tame 

 Clinton grape-vine.anotheris the gall c«r7/tc-i;oi£Eof Fitch, 

 which I fiud exclusively on the leaves of the Shellbark 

 Hickory (Cai-j/a alba), and the third is an undescribed 

 gall the size of a cabbage-seed on the leaves of the Pignut 



