ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 361 



ing totally unknown in New England. 

 The beetle (Fig. 7) is of a blueish or ash 

 gray color, distinguished, as its name im- 

 plies, by having three shiny black im- 

 pressed spots at the lower edge of the 

 thorax. The female deposits a single 

 egg in an oblong slit about one-eighth 

 inch long, which she has previously form- 

 ed with her beak in the stalk of the 

 potato. The larva subsequently hatches 

 out, and bores into the heart of the stalk, 

 always proceeding downward toward the 

 root. When full grown, it is a little over 

 one-fourth inch long (Fig. 6), and is a 

 soft, whitish, legless grub, with a scaly 

 head. Hence it can always be readily 

 •distinguished from the larva of the Stalk- 



Fig. 6. — Potato Stalk-Weevil. 



borer, which has invariably sixteen legs, 

 no matter how small it may be. Un- 

 like this last insect, it becomes a pupa 

 .(Fig. 6) within the potato stalk which it 

 inhabits ; and it comes out in the beetle 

 state about the last of August or the be- 

 ginning of September. 



Remedy. — Same as with the foregoing 

 species. Burn all the vines which wilt 

 from its attacks — roots and all, for it al- 

 most always works below ground. The 

 stalk-borer must bo searched for, if one 

 will be sure of killing him as he leaves 

 the stalk to transform; but as this stalk- 

 weevil transforms within the vine, one 

 may be pretty sure of destroying it by 

 turning the vines when they first wilt. 



POTATO or TOMATO WOEM.—This 

 -well-known insect, the larva of which is 

 usually called the potato worm, but it is 

 far commoner on the closely allied toma- 

 to, the foliage of which it often clears off 

 "very completely in particular spots in a 

 single night. Many persons are afraid 

 to handle this worm, from an absurd 

 idea that it has the power of stinging 

 with the horn on its tail. But this is a 

 vulgar error, and the worm is totally 

 incapable of doing any direct harm to 

 man, either with the conspicuous horn 



on its tail, or with any hidden weapon 

 that it may have concealed about its 

 person. In fact, this dreadful looking 

 horn is not peculiar to the potato worm, 

 but is met with in almost all the larvae cf 

 the large and beautiful group to which it 

 belongs (Sphinx family.) It seems to 

 have no special use, but, like the bunch 

 of hair on the breast of the turkey cock, 

 to be a mere ornamental appendage. 



When full-fed, which is usually about 

 the last of August, the Potato worm bur- 

 rows under ground and shortly after- 

 wards transforms into the pupa state. 

 The pupa is often dug up in the spring 

 from ground where tomatoes or pota- 

 toes were grown in the preceding sea- 

 son ; and most persons that meet with it . 

 suppose that the singular, jug-handled 

 appendage at one end of it is its tail. 

 In reality, however, it is the tongue-case, 

 and contains the long pliable tongue 

 which the future moth will employ in 

 lapping up the nectar of the flowers, be- 

 fore which, in the dusky gloom of some 

 warm, balmy summer's evening, it hangs 

 for a few moments suspended in the air, 

 like the glorified ghost of some departed 

 botanist. 



The moth itself was formerly confound - 

 ed with the Tobacco- worm moth {Sphin x 

 Carolina, Linnaeus), which indeed it ve ry 

 closely resembles, having ' the same se- 

 ries of orange-colored spots on each side 

 of the abdomen. The gray and black 

 markings, however, of the wings differ 

 perceptibly in the two species ; and in 

 the Tobacco-worm moth there is always 

 a more or less faint white spot or dot 

 near the center of the front wing, which 

 is never met with in the other species. In 

 Connecticut and other northern States 

 where tobacco is grown, the Potato- 

 worm often feeds upon the leaves of the 

 tobacco plant, the true Tobacco-worm 

 being unknown in those latitudes. In 

 the more southerly States, on the other 

 hand, and in Mexico and in the West 

 Indies, the true Potato-worm is unknown, 

 and it is the Tobacco-worm that the to- 

 bacco growers have to fight. While in 

 the intermediate country both species 

 may frequently be captured on the wing 

 in the same garden and upon the same 

 evening. In other words, the Potato- 

 worm is a northern species, the Tobacco- 

 worm a southern species; but on the 



