﻿16 SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT 



will suffice to the acre. Two lengths of nozzles are furnished, one for 

 use when the plants are small, the other when they are larger. The 

 can should be filled on the ground and then raised on a bench or bar- 

 rel, from which it is easily attached to the back. The walking serves 

 to keep the Green well shaken, and the flow of liquid is regulated at 

 will by a pressure of the fingers at the junction of the tubes with the 

 metallic nozzles. When not in use, the tubes should be removed and 

 the can emptied and laid on its back. I can testify to the ease and 

 efficiency with which this little machine may be used, and it has been 

 so well thought of that it is now manufactured and for sale at 66 W. 

 Madison street; Chicago, though I do not know at what price. 



THE TROPER SCIENTIFIC NAME OF THE BEETLE. 



Of course the American reader need not be informed of the fact 

 that this insect has been universally known, since it attained popular 

 notoriety, by the scientific name of Doryphora IQ-lineata Say. Amer- 

 ican coleopterists have from the first been fully aware that it differed 

 from the typical genus Doryphora in lacking the point produced on 

 the mesosternum (middle of breast), which is characteristic of that 

 genus as defined by its founder, Olivier. Yet as this character is of 

 secondary importance, and by no means of generic value, in many 

 other families of Coleoptera; and our insect in other characters, and 

 especially in the short and transverse form of the maxillary palpi^ 

 approaches nearer to the genus Doryphora than to any other genus of 

 its sub-family (6'A7'?/S(9weZ2VZecs)) that father of American Entomology ;► 

 Thomas Say, described it under that genus. Subsequent American 

 authorities, including Dr. LeConte, have followed this enlarged defini- 

 tion of the genus DurypJiora, considering the palpial of much more 

 value than the sternal characters; and Say's name has consequently 

 been universally adopted in this country both by popular and technical 

 writers. The genus Chrijsomela of Linnneus has been made the basis 

 of several minor divisions, which are considered to be of generic 

 value or not, according to the opinions of different systematists. Thu& 

 Melsheimer in his catalogue of N. A. Coleoptera (1853) refers our 

 potato-beetle to the genus Polygramma erected by the French ento- 

 mologist Chevrolat upon unimportant colorational characters. Re- 

 cently, the Sweedish entomologist Stal in a Monograph of the Ameri- 

 can Chrysomelides* erects the genus Myocoryna^ on the slightly 

 compressed form of the antennal club, for our potato beetle, and sev- 

 eral other species from Texas and Mexico. Until some yet distant 

 day when the science of entomology shall be perfected, there will be 



♦Trans. Sweedish Academy, 1858, p. ol6. 



