INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE POTATO. 245 



genus as the potato-plant, principally Solanum datura 



Dunal, and closely allied genera. But with the settlement 



of this country and the introduction of the Irish potato, 



these bugs also began to take advantage of the fruits of 



civihzation and transferred their feeding-grounds from the 



roadside to the potato-patch, and rapidly spread eastward 



from one to another, as well as being imported in the 



shipj)ing of the potatoes. 



Thus, in 1859 they had reached a point one hundred 



miles west of Omaha, N ebraska ; five 



years later crossed the Mississippi 



into Illinois; and advanced steadily 



eastward till recorded among the 



Atlantic States in 1874. Though 



slow to be introduced into some ^ o \C 



„ .. J, ^, , ., . Fig. 139.— rt, beakof pre- 



few sections of the country, it is daceous bug; c, beak 



safe to assert that this pest may ?[fJe?Rne^'^/''° ^""" 



to-day be found almost wherever 



the potato is grown in the United States or southern 



Canada. 



Life-history. — During October the beetles enter the 

 earth and there hibernate till the warm sunshine of April 

 or May brings them forth. As soon as the young plants 

 appear, the female beetles deposit their yellow eggs upon 

 the under side of the leaves near the tips, each female lay- 

 ing from six hundred to one thousand eggs during the 

 course of a month. Meanwhile the beetles have done 

 considerable damage by eating the young and tender 

 plants. In about a week, there hatch a horde of very 

 small but very hungry larva3, which fairly gorge themselves 

 with potato-foliage and increase in size with astonishing 

 rapidity. In four or five weeks, after having eaten an 



