130 



COLORADO BEETLE. 



height its roots fill the surface earth and the water 

 cannot cut through them, and it forces its way hither 

 and thither among the blades of grain, much as one 

 is obliged to do in a crowd of men. So it spreads 

 over the field and evenly with a little aid. When 

 wheat is in this condition, and the young grasshop- 

 pers are hatched in sandy places open to the sun, 

 they cannot eat the wheat as fast as it grows, and 

 besides it is an easy matter, by irrigating the fields, to 

 drown them, or at least keep their numbers small. 

 But even when they are eating the wheat in half a 

 dozen fields, or in a dozen fields in one neighborhood, 

 as fast as it grows, there will be many other fields 

 where the wheat is not molested, and by the time 

 the pests are grown and have wings to fly, a large 

 breadth of wheat will be strong and vigorous, and 

 consequently will mature. Usually, therefore, the 

 young grasshoppers which came to our fields only 

 once before, two years ago do but little damage, 

 and the average yield of wheat during the year men- 

 tioned was as great as that of the Eastern States ; 

 while in ordinary years it is more than double. In 

 this place and all through Colorado the gardens are 

 as bare as in January, for no attempt has been made 

 to plant vegetables. The grasshoppers do not touch 

 peas, however, and these are growing fast. 



We have on the northwest about 4,000 acres sowed 

 with wheatj and owned by thirty or forty farmers. 

 The wheat is all gone, and that region looks like a 

 desert. It is true that there are a few fields in the 

 midst left, but we expect to hear every day of their 

 destruction northeast and east of the railroad and 

 along what is called Free Church. The owners are 

 constantly on guard. When an advance detachment 

 of grasshoppers appears it is attacked with fire and 

 water, and thus for the present the enemy is kept at 

 bay. On this side of the river, all the five-acre, ten- 

 acre, and twenty-acre lots are without vegetation. 

 To the south there are several hundred acres of wheat 

 where the wheat is over knee-high and growing as 

 if in a race for its life. We may save 500 acres of 

 wheat out of 5,000, which will give us bread, but we 

 expected to have obtained $150,000 from this year's 

 crop. Meanwhile we are waiting. Corn will be 

 planted in hundreds of fields in ten days. All kinds 

 of garden vegetables are now growing in boxes in the 

 houses, waiting their chance to appear with safety 

 in the outer air. 



All this is a fair description. As a people we are 

 certainly better off than those farther east, because 

 we have water at our command ; because our stock- 

 range is preserved, giving to those keeping cattle 

 their usual returns, while our mines of silver and 

 gold are unfailing. But these resources do not help 

 our farmers at all. There are some families now ut- 

 terly destitute. Every dollar they had or could bor- 

 row was put into the ground, and it will never re- 

 turn. Friends of such in the East should help them 

 if possible. Probably county commissioners can 

 give some relief; the Legislature may ; Colorado is 

 entirely out of debt. The Grangers can do nothing 

 for each other, for all are involved. 



COLORADO BEETLE, THE. This insect 

 takes its name from the region where it was 

 first discovered. It was known to the earlier 

 entomologists as an insect that found its chief 

 food in the vines of the wild-potato, then and 

 now common to the Rocky Mountains. When 

 population, in its progress westward, reached 

 .the base of the Rocky Mountains, and farms 

 were opened, the Colorado beetle found in the 

 cultivated potato a more succulent and conge- 

 nial food. It made its first appearance in Ne- 

 braska in 1859, where it multiplied greatly, 

 and .thence began to move eastward, seeking 

 new fields to ravage. Two years later it spread 



over Iowa, and about the year 1865 reached 

 the Mississippi. A description of the insect 

 has been very well given by Mr. Dodge, the 

 entomologist of the Department of Agriculture 

 at Washington. He finds its presence reported, 

 in 1872, in two counties of Pennsylvania; in 

 1873, in four counties in New York, thirteen 

 of the western counties of Pennsylvania, and 

 seven of West Virginia. It was then moving 

 steadily eastward. In the summer of the same 

 year, a few of these pests were recognized in 

 the District of Columbia, and in the vicinity of 

 Baltimore. In 1874 their presence was re- 

 ported in seven counties of Maryland, and a 

 few counties of Virginia; but they were mov- 

 ing eastward and northward at the same time 

 in larger numbers. During the summer of 1874 

 they had overrun the eastern counties of Penn- 

 sylvania ; had crossed over Delaware into New 

 Jersey ; had extended half-way across the State 

 of New York, and they reached the Atlantic 

 borders of Long Island in the autumn of the 

 same year. In 1875 they were reported in 

 large numbers in parts of Virginia and Mary- 

 land, being very numerous along the line of 

 the Northern Central in Baltimore County ; 

 and also in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and 

 New York. Notwithstanding their ravages, 

 the potato crop proved very abundant. 



The following is a description of this insect 

 and of its powers of reproduction : 



The perfect insect measures about half an inch in 

 length, is of a thick oval shape, and of a yellowish 

 cream color, with ten dark-brown or blackish lines 

 running lengthwise down the wing-covers. The 

 head and thorax, or middle portion of the body, are 

 of an orange-brown color, spotted or marked with 

 black. It has, in addition to the wing-covers, a pair 

 of pink wings, which lie folded beneath and hidden 

 except when the insect is in flight. The eggd, to the 

 number of 1,000 to 1,200 and even more, are deposit- 

 ed upon the young leaves of the potato in clusters, 

 containing from one to two dozen each. These hatch 

 in a very few days, and the young larvse go immedi- 

 ately to work on the foliage, and acquire their full 

 size in less than three weeks. In color they are a dark 

 orange red, the head black and a black ring on the 

 first segment of the body, and a double row of black 

 dots down each side, from the head to the end of the 

 abdomen. After arriving at maturity the larvee go 

 into the ground and change to purple, and in about 

 ten days or two weeks the perfect beetles appear. 

 They begin to pair in about a week, and on the four- 

 teenth day the female begins to deposit her eggs, so 

 that we may consider that it takes about fifty days 

 for the insect to go through all its changes from egg 

 to egg, though, of course, the time may vary a little 

 from differences in temperature, etc.* A writer in 

 the Canadian Entomologist estimated that if the prog- 

 eny of a single pair of these insects were allowed to 

 increase without molestation for an entire season the 

 result would amount to over 60,000,000 of individuals, 

 which will give some idea of their powers of repro- 

 duction. Though the potato is its particular food, it 

 will feed upon otherplants, such as the tomato, egg- 

 plant, etc., sometimes doing considerable damage, 

 and in one case reported, after destroying a field of 

 potatoes, they finished up on a patch of the James- 

 town weed (.Datura stramonium). 



Mr. Dodge estimates the loss sustained by 

 the ravages of the beetle at not less than $12,- 

 000,000 a year. He also gives statistics to 



