﻿SEVENTH ANNUAL KEPORT 



of ascertaining the facts, which he might easily have done, either 

 from myself or from any of his bucolic friends, he chose to display his. 

 agrestic proficiency by publishing a reply in the daily papers. The 

 following extract from the reply will show that a man may be a good 

 mayor and yet cut a sorry figure as agriculturist or entomologist ; for 

 every reader of these reports will notice that there is scarcely a state- 

 ment that is not opposed to the facts : 



Treating your letter, therefore, seriously, J have to state that there never has beeii> 

 a potato buor'seen tlying about St. Louis or any other city in the United States or territo- 

 ries ; that the potato hu^r never has caused any alarm in any city nor in the country — only 

 in certain seasonsthat seemed to be favorable to tiie production of them, [am not aware 

 of the potato bus: attacking any other vegetable. I consider the fears of tiie people of 

 Belgium entirelj' groundless, even if the ravages of the potato bug had been great in 

 any locality the past season (which it has not,) and is a matter of no apprehension or 

 comment at the present time in this country. 



Mayor Brown, though he has the reputation of being extremely 

 versatile, has evidently not worked in a potato patch of late years I 

 Nor did his letter seem to inspire much confidence among the Bel- 

 gians, who, soon after its publication, passed an act prohibiting the 

 importation of American potatoes. 



IS IT POISONOUS ? 



This question, which was very fully discussed, pro and con, be- 

 tween the years 1866 and 1870, ar.d settled in the affirmative, has been 

 revived again by Prof. T. J. Burrill, of the Illinois Industrial Univer- 

 sity, who published an item, which went the rounds of the agricultural 

 press, to the effect that the insect is not poisonous; a statement he 

 supported by the facts that he had rubbed the juice from the mashed 

 insect into a flesh cut, and had had some accidentally squirted into 

 his eye, without any injurious effects resulting. Now I would not go- 

 to the extent of a certain sarcastic Chicago professor who affirms that 

 he could fix up a decoction from the dead beetles that would cause a^ 

 vacancy in the chair of Vegetable Physiology and Horticulture in the 

 Illinois Industrial University, if Prof. Burrill inhaled it, and suggests^ 

 that there are certain animals that poison will not affect, and that 

 Prof. B. may be one of them ; nor to the extreme of a Philadelphia 

 physician who asserts that the tincture from this beetle is the most 

 virulent of insect poisons, and that nothing can be compared with it 

 except the Argas of Miana, in Persia, and the Coya in the valley 

 Neyba, in Popayan, South America, according to Ulloa's Travels, VoL 

 I, p. 343.* Yet there are so many authenticated cases of poisoning 



*See an article in tlie Transactions of the Ilomoepathic Mtdical Society of tlie State of New York, 

 Vol. VIII, pp. 142-1G9, 18()9, by E. M. Hale, M. D., of Chicago. In this article, which is mostly ct^ 

 quotation from the American Entomologist, with four poorly-colored lithograiihic plates made mostly 

 from my wood- cuts, without credit, Dr. Hale brings together several well authenticated cases of pois- 

 oning. 



