148 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[October, 



difficult to have applied, a remedy; perhaps 

 submerging the fields, where that could have 

 been done, would have been effectual. 



HONEY LOCUST. 



CoNEWAGO, Sept. 22, 1881. 

 S. S. Rathvon, E^(i—Dcar Sir: Enclosed fplease 

 find seeds of the Honey Locust, some of which con- 

 tain larvas of some liind, which, if explained, to- 

 gether with their history, nature, &c., &c., would 

 prove of interest to many readers of the Farmer. — 

 Tours very respeclfnUy, F. W. B. 



Your letter and seeds came duly to hand ; 

 one or two of the seeds, however, were 

 crushed, and the larvse killed, although we 

 succeeded in breeding the mature insects out 

 of the remainder; but we came very near 

 being defeated, not because the insect itself 

 was new to us, but we should have failed in 

 their proper identification. When we re- 

 moved the seeds from the envelope we placed 

 them in a small pasteboard box, and on the 

 night of the 29th of September the perfect in- 

 sect evolved from the pupre, cut a round hole 

 through the wall of the box, and all but one 

 escaped during the night, and that one we 

 captured immediately outside of the box. 

 This insect belongs to the order Coleoptera 

 (Beetles) and is commonly called the " Honey 

 Locust seed-weevil," {Sjpermophagus robinice,) 

 and is allied to the " Pea-weevil," more gen- 

 cially called "Pea-bug." There were nine 

 seeds in the envelope, two of which were 

 crushed and the pup® therein killed. Three 

 seeds are still intact, and therefore three of 

 the weevils must have escaped. If the seeds 

 of the Honey Locust were particularly valu- 

 able, five out of eight or nine might be con- 

 sidered a proportionally great destruction, but 

 even the remaining three may develop a 

 beetle before nest spring, which would be a 

 further depreciation. They differ from the 

 Pea-bug in that they devour the whole in- 

 ternal kernel of the seed, so that they could 

 not possibly germinate, whereas the Pea-bug 

 generally does not touch the germ, and most 

 of the infested peas will still produce plants. 

 This specimen before us is eight miUimeters in 

 length, and about four millimeters across the 

 bases of the wing covers. The "horns" (mi- 

 te)ince) are proportionally longer than they are 

 in the pea-bug, and the entire insect is a 

 light chestnut-brown in color, slightly mot- 

 tled with a darker and a lighter color near 

 the ends of the wing covers. The "Honey 

 Locust" [Oleditschia triacanthos) is not as 

 common and not as accessible as the pea, and 

 hence we have never had an opportunity to 

 study the "history" of the insect experimenV 

 ally, but we presume it is similar to that of the 

 Peabug. The female Pea-weevil deposits her 

 eggs on the outside of the young and tender 

 pea-pods early in the summer, and in a short 

 time the young grub is hatched and cuts 

 through the pod and into a seed. More eggs 

 are often deposited than there are seeds in the 

 pod, hence the overplus very probably all per- 

 ish. They are so exceedingly small when they 

 are first excluded from the egg, that the aper- 

 ture of entrance is soon healed up by the rapid 

 development of the fruit. When peas are 

 gi;een, millions of these little pea-worms are 

 eaten without any body being injured, or 

 _even knowing of it. After all, what is it but 

 eating cleanly vegetable feeding animals, fat- 

 tened too on delicate peas. The larva of the 



honey-locust weevil does not need to make the 

 provision for its egress from the seed that the 

 pea-bug does, notwithstanding the shell is 

 harder than that of a pea-seed, and no such 

 provision would be necessary; for an insect 

 that can cut a hole through a stiff pasteboard 

 box in one night, can help itself through the 

 world. Please send us some entire pods con- 

 taining seeds. 



LIMA-BEAN ENEMY. 

 On the 15th of September, S. P. E., Esq., 

 brought us the pod of a Lima-bean in its green 

 state, containing an insect, which, through a 

 want of time and proper opportunity, passed 

 away without our being able to make the ne- 

 cessary record of its appearance and develop- 

 ment. We, however, will state what we 

 did observe and perhaps some other person 

 may know something about it. The pod, as 

 we have said, was still green, but on opening 

 it all the seeds, except about the half of one, 

 had been consumed by an insect or insects, 

 and nothing remained but a number of yellow- 

 Lsh excremeutal pellets; and a round hole was 

 cut through one side of the pod. Within the 

 cavity of the pod we found a short veutrally 

 flattened larva, white beneath, and very pale 

 green above, covered with snort'hairs leaning 

 backward, but distinctly showing the sutures 

 between the segments. The eyes were black, 

 and it had six short, whitish anterior feet; but 

 it had, instead of prolegs, wart-like con- 

 cretions on the lower abdomen, arranged 

 similar to those in Lepidoptera. We took it 

 at first to be a Lamiccodan, but we subse- 

 quently observed that it did not spin a cocoon 

 as the Lamiccodans do. We placed the pod 

 containing the lava in a covered glass jar. In 

 two days thereafter, and after consuming 

 nearly all of the remaining seed, the larva 

 abandoned the twisted and shrinking pod, 

 and then crawled up the side of the jar, fast- 

 ened the caudal end of the body to the shoul- 

 der of the jar, and hung for three days with 

 its head downward. It then threw off its 

 larval skin, and suspended a blunt naked pupa 

 of a dull yellowish color, and about a fourth 

 of an inch in length, with the pupal wings 

 folded over the sternum, and indications of 

 long autennse. Indeed, the process was simi- 

 lar to the transformations of the coccinellaus, 

 and the lava was not much unlike that of the 

 "Northern Lady hivd"—(Epilachna borealis). 

 On our next observation we found it had 

 fallen to the bottom of the jar, and was lying 

 on its back. Knowing that the evolution of 

 the imago would take place through the back 

 we attem))ted to turn it over, and found it 

 fastened, eitherfrom an injury received in the 

 fall, or a glutinous substance on the bottom, 

 and in a subsequent attempt to turn it over 

 we fractured it, and in a day thereafter it 

 turned black. On attempting to remove it, it 

 was broken in pieces, and that ended our ob- 

 servations, made at a period when our head 

 and our hands were almost entirely absorbed 

 by our secular obligations and engagements. 



On the 20th of September last, Mr. L. 

 brought a dozen of larva that he found cross- 

 ing the road near Petersburg, Lancaster 

 county. Ho did not observe any of them on 

 the vegetation of the neighboring fields, but 

 the dry dusty road had thousands of them. 



They are three quarters of an inch long, have 

 the pectoral and prolegs arranged as in the 

 Leiccanians, but they have a disproportion- 

 ately large head, and first thoracic segment. 

 The color is dark, swarthy on top and lighter 

 on the underside; the segmental divisions are 

 deep and distinct; there is a yellowish lateral 

 line on each side, and dorsally they are spot- 

 ted with black, from end to end. The thoracic 

 segments are contracted, are of a darker color 

 than the other parts of the back, and have the 

 black spots closer sogether. As we had neither 

 time nor food to feed them, we immersed them 

 and have them still. 



Entomological. 



THE CORN-WORM. 



(^Seliothis armigera) Hubner. 



In many of the Western States the corn- 

 crop is bein^ considerably injured by a green- 

 ish worm which lives beneath the husks and 

 devours the kernels. This same worm in the 

 Southern States feeds upon the cotton bolls, 

 and on this account is there known as the 

 boll worm. It does not confine itself to these 

 two great staples of our country— corn and 

 cotton— but also feeds upon tomatoes, peas 

 and beans. These worms vary in color from 

 a dull green to pale brown, and are sometimes 

 tinged with pink. This difference in color is 

 due largely to a difl'erence in the quality of 

 their food, as those found in the green corn 

 are usually green, while the darker ones are 

 usually met with in corn that has become 

 more mature. They are usually marked with 

 darker stripes — the green worms with stripes 

 of darker green and the brown worms with 

 stripes of darker brown. In the latitude of 

 Northern Illinois there appears to be but one 

 annual breed, and these pass the winter in the 

 chrysalis state. When fully-grown they bur- 

 row obliquely into the earth to the depth of 

 five or six inches, and line their burrow with 

 a thin layer of silk; in the bottom of this bur- 

 row the worm soon casts off its skin and as- 

 sumes the chrysalis form. 



As these worms live concealed from view 

 beneath the husks, there presence is seldom 

 discovered until after they have done all the 

 damage that they are capable of doing; and it 

 seems almest impossible to devise any means 

 for exterminating them while they are in this 

 situation. After they have entered the earth 

 and assumed the chrysalis form, however, they 

 are more at our mercy. If the ground in which 

 the chrysalids are hidden is either plowed or 

 otherwise stirred so as to sift the loose dirt 

 around them, the first rain-storm that comea 

 will cause the dirt to adhere to them, and 

 this, in connection with the subsequent freez- 

 ing, nearly alwavs proves fatal to them ; 

 whereas if they had been allowed to remain in 

 their burrows they could have withstood any 

 amount of freezing without receiving the 

 slishtest injury. Where large areas are 

 planted to corn this is seldom harvested early 

 enough to permit the ground on which it is 

 grown to be plowed the same season. In cases 

 of this kind a small triangular one-horse cul- 

 tivator may be run between the rows, and 

 this will disturb the greater number of the 

 burrows of this insect sutBciently to cause the 

 chrysalids to perish. It should stir the ground 

 to a depth of at least six inches, and to make 

 assurance doubly sure the field should be 

 cross-cultivated. This should be done as late 

 in the season as possible, so as to give the 

 worms sufficient time to assume the chrysalis 

 form before their burrows are disturbed, or 

 else after the worm is unearthed it will form a 

 new burrow and thus pass the winter in safety. 



D. W. COQinLLETT. 



McHenry County, 111. 



The above we clip from the Oermantown 

 Telegraph, and would make the additional re. 

 mark, that in the summer of 1880, we reared 



