222 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



(Pieris rapae, Linn.), the asparagus beetle (Crioceris aspar- 

 agi, Linn.) and the carpet beetle (Anlhrenus scrophulariae, 

 Linn.) are examples of the truth of this statement. 



The wheat midge has never, throughout its entire European 

 history, extending over a century and a half, approached the 

 destructiveness which it has shown since its advent here. The 

 losses caused by it in New York State alone in 1854, accord- 

 ing to estimates made by the secretary of the New York 

 State Agricultural Society, were fifteen million dollars.* 



The cabbage butterfly caused for years an annual loss of 

 cabbages about Quebec, Canada, amounting to two hundred 

 and fifty thousand dollars, and in 1870 the loss from this 

 source near New York City was over five hundred thousand 

 dollars, f 



The asparagus beetle, which has at times destroyed entire 

 plantations of asparagus upon the sea-board in the vicinity of 

 New York, has been known for centuries in Europe, but has 

 hardly been referred to by writers on economic entomology 

 as an injurious insect. Although common in Russia, a writer 

 in referring to it in 1880, states that it is never known to be 

 obnoxious there. | 



The carpet beetle, commonly known in Massachusetts as 

 the buffalo bug, first recognized in this country in the year 

 1872, has been known as a common species throughout a large 

 part of Europe for more than a century. While in several 

 portions of the United States it has done incalculable injury, 

 while its ravages on carpets have excited serious alarm in house- 

 keepers, and have threatened to compel a resort to uncarpeted 

 floors, no instance is known of its ever having been detected 

 in feeding upon carpets in Europe, or doing any damage 

 except among dried plants or museum specimens .| 



Mr. L. O. Howard, entomologist to the United States 

 Department of Agriculture, writes in "Insect Life" that 

 ' ' the climate of Europe is much less favorable to the undue 

 multiplication of injurious insects than that of North America. 

 Also, that the actually smaller number of injurious species 



* Fitch's sixth report (page 12) transactions New York State Agricultural Society, 

 XX, 1860, page 754. 



t Report on Rocky Mountain locust, Dr. A. S. Packard, United States Geographical 

 Survey, 1877, page 747. 



X Hagen in "Canadian Entomologist," X, 1878, page 161. 



