29 



BULLETIN OF 



Massachusetts Board of Agriculture 



SOME INSECTS INJURING MARKET GARDEN CROPS. 



By Prof. II. T. Fernald, Professor of Entomology, Massachusetts Agricultural College. 



Market gardening in Massachusetts is an important industry. 

 Created by the growth of cities it must increase as they do, in 

 order to supply their inhabitants with the vegetable necessities 

 of life. The successful market gardener is but a short distance 

 from his market, and in consequence, one of the first indications 

 of nearness to the city a traveller sees on approaching it, is a 

 marked increase in the amount of cultivated land and of green- 

 houses. In fact the market gardens supplying a city, surround it 

 in a broad and often almost continuous belt. 



The continuous acreage of crops thus produced is directly fav- 

 orable to the rapid increase of those insects which attack the 

 different kinds of market garden crops, and as this industry grows 

 larger, we must expect an increased amount of injury from insect 

 pests. Some of the more common of these and the most successful 

 methods for preventing loss by them are here considered. 



The Asparagus Beetle. 



(Crioceris asparagi Linn.) 



This too familiar insect was introduced into New York from 

 Europe about 1856, and is now generally distributed over the 

 eastern United States. It passes the winter as the adult beetle, 

 hiding in any protected place. In the spring, about the time the 

 asparagus begins to appear above ground, the beetles leave their 

 hiding places and lay their eggs on the young shoots of the plant. 

 The eggs are quite large, brown in color, and attached by one end 

 to the plant. They are laid separately, but often quite close to- 

 gether in rows, and when abundant are very noticeable on the 

 asparagus tops. They batch in from three to eight days, produc- 

 ing little gray " grubs " with black heads. Each grub feeds until 



