94 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



phora 10-lineata can only remain healthy and increase rapidly 

 when feeding upon solanaceous plants. Cut off his rations 

 for any considerable length of time, and he will surely die. 

 Hence, if we plant only early potatoes, whose tops are all dead 

 by August 10, but few potato-beetles will be found alive on 



your grounds next season A word as to how this 



policy has worked in practice. During the season past, in 

 which I have grown twenty-one hundred bushels of potatoes 

 on the Iowa Agricultural College farm, the expense of keeping 

 potato-beetles in check by hand-picking, when they became 

 too numerous, has been less than two dollars, and no poison 

 has been used, and no late potatoes have been grown in my 

 department. Of course, where potato-patches are contig- 

 uous, any patch may suffer from the neighbors' bugs, so that 

 this policy of autumn starvation must be general to be most 

 effective." 



Mr. Flint. I do not know very much about these beetles 

 myself, but I have seen them on potato-patches in Wisconsin, 

 where they were so thick that you could scrape them up by 

 handful s. I have seen them in all stages of their growth, in 

 immense numbers. We have had them in all parts of Massa- 

 chusetts, I think, this year, to a limited extent, and we shall 

 unquestionably have them to a vastly greater extent next 

 year. In the course of 1877, they will undoubtedly spread 

 all over New England, so that we are obliged to look this 

 fact in the face, and take the best precautions we can. I 

 think the suggestion to cultivate only very early potatoes is 

 a very good one ; but in order to be successful, it ought to be 

 done by all farmers. If one farmer raises early potatoes and 

 his neighbor raises late ones, the insect will be propagated 

 continually. It is better, therefore, to rely on Paris green. 



Question. Will they not feed on other vegetables? 



Mr. Flint. There are a few other plants, nearly allied to 

 the potato family, which they attack. They attack the to- 

 mato also ; but they generally prefer the potato. 



Dr. Stuktevant of Framingham. On account of the 

 importance of this subject, — the Colorado beetle, — I would 

 like to make a few remarks in confirmation of the paper which 

 has just been read. There is no question that the Colorado 



