THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



73 



state, as is the universal habit of the family to which it 

 belongs. 



John Townley, 'Wisconsin. — The large whitish 16- 

 leggecl grubs, or rather caterpillars, which you send are 

 all of them tlie larvie of a large gray moth — Cossus robi- 

 Tiiae. Tliey live very commonly in the heart-wood of 

 living Black Oaks and sometimes of other kinds of Oaks 

 and Locust trees, boring it up pretty extensively.- This 

 does not materially injure the health of the tree — for a 

 tree can live with all its heart-wood completely gone — but 

 it ruins it for anything but firewood. The grubs in stumps 

 and decayed wood are quite different from the above — in- 

 deed it is a very general rule, that the same insect does not 

 bore indifferently into living and into decayed wood. Such 

 wood-borers as are 16-legged produce moths; such as are 

 6-legged produce beetles of many diffei-ent kinds, for 

 example the different species of Horn-bugs, (iucanus;) 

 such as have no legs at all or only 6 very minute nipple- 

 like legs, mostly produce Long-horned beetles {Ceraynhyx 

 family.) The common " White Grub," which is also C- 

 legged and feeds upon living roots, is different again, and 

 80 are those 6-legged grubs which feed upon dung. 



Tlie fact of one of the larvae which you send having 

 been repeatedly frozen "as solid as a piece of candy," and 

 as repeatedly come to life again, after sustaining a tem- 

 perature of nearly 24° below zero, is one which every field 

 entomologist is familiar with. These fleshy larvie, how- 

 ever, both when tliey are alive and when they are dead, 

 will stand a temperature much below 32**, without freez- 

 ing. I attribute this to the juices of tiieir bodies being 

 more or less mucilaginous ; for cold that freezes water will 

 not freeze gum-water. I quite agree with you in the infer- 

 ence you draw, as to cold winters liaving little or no effect 

 in destroying noxious Insects. It is excessively wet and 

 excessively dry weather that often kills off insects; not 

 excessive cold or excessive heat. 



Besides the 17-year Cieadas (Locusts,) which occur in 

 great swarms once in 17 years, and a few individuals of 

 which are stated on good authority to occur in Long 

 Island, N. Y.ain the intervening years, there are several 

 other species of Cicada which are not periodic in tlie time 

 of their appearance. Tlie fact of the striped Cucumber- 

 bug not having troubled your neighborhood for'fhe last 

 two years is only one of many such anomalies. For 

 example, in particular years the Army-worm, or the Rose- 

 bug, or the Gray Blister-beetle will swarm ; in other years 

 it will take an Entomologist to find any of them. 



F. L. Van Arsdale, Wise. — The hairy larvfe about J 

 inch long wliich you send, and which you found in a case 

 of insects apparently eating them up, are those of some of 

 the destructive Dei'mesles family and probably of an At- 

 tarjenus. They are a terrible pestin collections of Natural 

 History, when they are once allowed to effect an entrance. 



The best preventive is to keep a lump of good camphor, 

 ab()Ut the size of a walnut, in every case of insects, renew- 

 ing it regularly every spring — to have your cases as tiglit 

 as possible — and to keep them enclosed in an outer fortifi- 

 cation, such as is afforded by a cabinet in which the cases 

 slide as drawers, or by any tight closet, wardrobe or bu- 

 reau, which you may find it convenient to fill with your 

 cases. Camphor, however, does not kill the larvae when 

 they are already there. All it does is to deter the parent 

 beetle from laying her eggs in sucli strong-smelling situ- 

 ations. To get rid of those larvfe which you have already 

 in your cases, place the cases when the spring opens on 

 some level surface; and you will soon see, from the gun- 

 powder-like grains of excrement voided by the larvje, 

 which particular specimens are infested. Have ready a 

 small tm pail with a tiglit lid to it. Lay a sheet of cork 

 at the bottom of it, and place all the infested specimens 

 on this cork. Then shut down the lid. and immerse the 

 pail nearly, but not quite, up to the lid in boiling water, 

 and hold it there for some ten minutes. You will find that 

 the heat from the water will destroy, not only all the 

 larvae, but all the eggs that would otherwise soon hatch 

 out into larvie, without wetting or otherwise injuring tlie 

 specimens. If you have many cases, and they are all bad- 

 ly infested, it would pay you to have a tight tin envelop 

 of the proper size made to contain a single case, and im- 

 merse the whole nearly up to the lid of the envelop in 

 boiling water. 



C. M. B.. New Jersey. — The oval, flattened, gray eggs 

 about 3-16ths inch long, attached in two regular rows to 

 the sides of a twig, and lapping over one another a little, 



but the contrary wjy to the lap of shingles on a roof, are 

 the eggs of a Catydid. They are the same referred to in 

 the answer to Geo. Haines in the last number of the Pbac- 

 TicAi. Entomologist p. 57. 



Elias Nason, Mass., per The Houticulturist. — You 

 say that "your winter squash vines grow splendidly up 

 to a certain point, and then suddenly die;" thaf'youfind 

 no worm at the root;" and that " your neighbor's vines 

 are quite as mortal as your own, and you must stop the 

 disease or stop raising the article." In all probability it 

 is the Squash-vine Borer that attacks them. This is a 

 whitish 16-legged caterpillar, nearly an inch long when 

 full-grown, whicli lives in the stem of the vines, usually 

 jjretty close to the crown of the plant, in August. It af- 

 terwards bores its way out, goes underground, and next 

 summer comes out in the form of a pretty moth, (Trochi- 

 Hum cucurbitte,) with its front wings black and its hind 

 wings clear and glossy, which lays eggs on the young 

 vines, from each of which eggs a minute borer hatches 

 outand eats its way into the stem, the minute pin-hole, by 

 which it entered, soon closing up behind it. You will 

 find a good colored figure of.this moth in Harris's Injuri- 

 ous Inxccts, 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 hiy 

 its eggs for that year's brood. Wherever you find a vine 

 drooping or sickly, dig into its stem near the root till you 

 find the vermin. Do not be afraid of injuring the vine; 

 for if ^011 do not kill it. Me .Bore;- will, and the remedy 

 cannot be worse than the disease, and tnciy save the life 

 of the patient. 



The Editor of the IIorticuHurist observes, that he "has 

 had the same trouble with his squash vines," but that 

 now he "practices covering the vine lightly with earth 

 close up to the first blossom, and thus generally succeeds 

 in growing a crop of squashes." This is a very good pre- 

 ventive, as it debars the moth from laying her eggs on 

 her favorite spot, namely the main stem of the vine pretty 

 close to the crown. We fight the Striped Apple-tree 

 Borer and the Peach-tree Borer precisely on the same 

 principle, i. e. by precluding them from any access to the 

 but of the infested tree, which is the favorite spot of those 

 two insects. 



A. W. Brumbaugh, Penna. — The cylindrical holes 

 bored in your apple-twigs are made in May and June by 

 the Apple-twig borer — the Bostruhus bicaudaius of Say. 

 You will find a figure of this insect and a full account of 

 its operations in my Paper on Borers, (Pkactical Ento- 

 -MOLOGist, "Vol. I, page 27.) The insect you send along 

 with the bored apple-twig is a harmless one, belonging to 

 the PeWa family in the Order Neuroiitera. In this family 

 all the diflerent species, so long as they are in the larva 

 and pupa states, live in running water — under stones, 

 under and about floating saw-logs Ac, &c. Finally the 

 full-grown pupa, (which, like that of a grasshopjier, is as 

 active as the larva,) crawls out of the water — its skin 

 si>lit3 open in front — and outcomes the winged Fly. Some 

 species of the Per/a family are IJ inches long, and most 

 of them, whether large or small, are known to Fishermen 

 as " Shad-flies." In the Fly state they eat nothing ; and 

 in their preparatory states they feed on decaying vege- 

 table matter. The particular species which you send is 

 the TceniopUryx fasciata of Burmeister, a very common 

 insect. 



The Rose-bug, as you suppose, deposits its eggs in the 

 earth, where its larva hatching out feeds for two or three 

 years on roots, before it finally emerges again to the light 

 of day in the form of the perfect beetle. "The best remedy 

 is to jar (not shake) your infested trees upon a white 

 sheet; or if you cultivate on a large scale, to use one of 

 Dr. Hull's " Curculio-catchers," which will be fully de- 

 scribed in the next number of tlie Practical E.ntojiolo- 

 gist. Some grape-growers in the West fifld that the 

 Clinton grape-vine is peculiarly attractive to tliis insect; 

 and pi ant a single vine of this variety among their choicer 

 varieties by way of trap. For the benefit of other sub- 

 scribers, I will copy your descrijition of the manner in 

 which this pestilent beetle operates with you. 



"In May and June they swarm in innumerable num- 

 bers, and are wonderfully destructive. I have a great 

 many grape-vines; and they have taken all of them for 

 tlic last 5 years. They destroy them when in bloom, and 

 strip the vines of all the leaves. Next in rotation they 



