110 transactions of the american institute. 



Insects — What Are They ? 



Dr. Trimble, in answer to this question, said spiders and worms are not 

 insects — wasps and bees arc, and they are the type. Insects are in sec- 

 tions with six legs, with sometimes two and sometimes four wings, and 

 with antenna3 that guide them in all their movements. The bee makes the 

 most accurate measurement in the world with its antennce, never erring or 

 varying the fraction of a hair in form or size of the cells. 



The Locust (Cicada). 



Norton Case writes from Granville, Ohio, ^Nlay 30: " The seventeen 

 year locusts are up for the fourth time in this place since my residence 

 here. They have had their holes open to the surface for some days, and 

 began to crawl up the warm side of my house the evening of the 25th 

 inst. The next morning they were out of their shells, but unable to fly." 



Alfred Churchill, of Kaneville, Illinois, says : 



" I would by no manner of means assert that your Club are not all 

 'Solons,' but on the locust question I would venture to intimate that close 

 observation would show them that, if the said locust does not eat, it has a 

 powerful faculty of suction. By inspection it will be found to have always 

 a bill to present to all succulent shoots of trees, of the then present year's 

 growth, which it persistently advances till satisfaction is obtained. Its 

 sucker and incisor, or rather incisors, are formed like those of the Illinois 

 green-head fly. and he uses it in the same way, for be it known to your 

 honorable Club, that the life of all blood-sucking flies is the sap of plants, 

 and blood their death, except the stable fly, which has an entirely different 

 apparatus .for suction. Musquitoes take the sap of grasses, herbs, flowers, 

 &c. Gnats I always found more abundant about nettles and currant 

 brush. More observation is needed than a hard working farmer can give. 

 This I have abundantly proved by close observation in Illinois, Missouri 

 and Minnesota ; in Illinois on the flie«, musquitoes and locusts ; in Mis- 

 souri on the fly and locust ; and in Minnesota on the fly and musquito." 



Dr. Trimble. — I am well convinced that locusts suck the sap of plants 

 while under ground. That they do that, I have proved by careful experi- 

 ments. Miss Morris, of Germantown, Pa., who devoted much attention to 

 the study of the locust, dug up pear trees and found the insects attached 

 to the roots. I have hatched the eggs in earthen flower-pots, in which I 

 buried the roots of such plants as the locusts live upon, and afterward 

 found them, when so small that I had to use a glass to see them, with 

 their sucker inserted in the bark. Of course, where there are millions of 

 them, they must injure the trees. 



About Wetting Grafts in the Mouth. 



Norton Case, of Granville, Ohio, says: "I have a fine lot of grafts now 

 growing, that I set myself, and not having water handy to wet them I did 

 it with my mouth. Perhaps the man who says wetting grafts in the mouth 

 will kill them, cliews tobacco. In that case, I should think it would." 



Pear-Trees Blighted — What is the Cause ? 



J. S. Woodard writes from Hess Road, Niagara county, New York, 

 June 1, as follows : 



