INJURIOUS INSECTS 



127 



accused of gnawing young shoots beneath the surface, 

 causing them to become woody and crooked in growth. 

 The beetle ilkistrated in Fig. 42 is a most beautiful 

 creature — from the entomologist's point of view — 

 slender and graceful in form, blue-black in color, with 

 red thorax and lemon-yellow and dark blue elytra or 



KIG. 42 — COMMON ASPARAGUS BEETLE 

 a, beetle ; d, egg ; c, newly hatched larva ; d, full-grown lar^'a 



wing covers, with reddish border. Its length is a 

 trifle less than one-fourth of an inch. 



From the scene of its first colonization in Queen's 

 County, N. Y., the inse(5t migrated to the other truck - 

 growing portions of Long Island. It soon reached 

 southern Conne(5ticut, and has now extended its range 

 northward through Massachusetts to New Hampshire. 

 Southward it has traveled through New Jersey, where 

 it was first noticed in 1868, to southern Virginia. At 

 present it is well established in the principal asparagus- 

 growing sections of New England, of New Jersey, 



