244 



THE OPEN COUNTRY 



species (B. pisi), a little larger and longer and much more injurious, is black in 

 colour, mottled with white, and has two round black spots on the white hinder part 

 of the body. In many places this beetle is so numerous that the cultivation of peas 

 has been entirely given up. The eggs are deposited while the plants are in bloom, 

 just as the pod begins to shape, generally one egg in each pea or bean. 



Asparagus also has a destroyer, in the form of a small beetle (Crioceris 

 asparagi), under a quarter of an inch long, with a red thorax, and marked on its 

 yellow elytra with black spots and a black cross. The larvae of this beetle eat 

 the asparagus sprouts as they come out of the ground. Another species (C 

 merdigera) feeds on lilies and hollyhocks. Chiefly black in colour, it is red 



on the thorax and elytra, 

 and is about the same 

 size as the preceding 

 species: it produces a 

 chirping sound by rub- 

 bing its wings against its 

 thorax, from which habit 

 it has been named "the 

 musician." The minute 

 beetles typified by the 

 so-called turnip-fly 

 (Haltica) arc represented 

 by a large number of 

 species, all of which are 

 injurious to plants; one 



of the most conn 1 being II. oleracea, which is blue or metallic green in colour, 



with small irregular spots, and bluish legs with a groove under the thighs of the 

 hind-legs, strong enough to enable the beetle to jump readily. Like most of the 

 associated species, these beetles remain the whole winter under the leaves and bark 

 of trees, and in similar hiding-places, to appear in the first days of spring and eat 

 into the seeds and early leaves of young plants. In doing this they pierce small 

 holes, which grow larger in the same degree as the leaves develop, and are there- 

 fore often erroneously ascribed to larger insects. The beetles deposit their eggs on 

 the leaves, which later on serve for the food of the larvae. 



THE OIL-BEETLE. 



( The great gr< mp of Hymenoptera is well represented in the fields 



by the humble-bees, which make their nests on the ground, and cover 

 them with moss. They live in communities like honey-bees, each community 

 being composed of males, females, and workers. Not only the workers, however, 

 but the fertile females are provided with baskets, brushes, and hooks on the 

 legs to remove the wax from their abdomen. Among the many species which on 

 account of the variability of their colour, and the facility with which their hair 

 may be rubbed off', are difficult to distinguish from one another, the best known are 

 the common humble-bee, the garden humble-bee, the moss humble-bee, and the 

 stone humble-bee. The ordinary humble-bee (Bombus terrestris) is nearly one inch 

 long, and principally black in colour with white markings on the breast, and yellow 



