1896.] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. ISO* 



the day. Late in Autumn, after all vines have been killed by the frost, 

 the adults congregate in considerable numbers about the unripe pump- 

 kins and squashes eating holes in them, and I have also found them in 

 October, in woods far from where their favorite food-plants had been 

 cultivated, feeding on the belated flowers of a species of Aster. For 

 myself I have never been able to account for the great numbers of these 

 beetles that appear every season, as if they developed on the roots of 

 Cucurbits alone it would be impossible to secure plants at all. 



Dr. Henry Shimer, who first published the life-history of this insect in 

 the "Prairie Farmer" of Aug. 12, 1865, stated that the insect wintered 

 over the pupal stage, but Prof. Riley, in his "Second Missouri Report, "^ 

 p. 66, says that he observed both pupae and adults Nov. 8, 1869, about 

 vines that he had isolated early in October, and reasoned from this that 

 the species hibernated both as pupae and adults. This, so far as I am 

 aware, completes our knowledge of the whereabouts and condition of 

 this insect from October until April. 



For some time I have been receiving complaints of a worm destroying 

 cucumber plants, growing in greenhouses for the purpose of securing the 

 vegetable for Winter use, but was unable to secure specimens until Dec. 

 28, 1895, when I visited the infested greenhouses located at Hyde Park, 

 near Cincinnati, Ohio, and identified the depredator. The young cucum- 

 ber plants were first started in small pots, and grown there until the third 

 leaf began to appear, when they were transplanted in rows in the benches, 

 the soil contained in these having been removed from the surface sod out- 

 side during the preceding August. At the time of my examination these 

 young plants were being rapidly destroyed by larvae varying in size from 

 one-half, or a little less, to two-thirds grown. I took many of them in 

 the very act of gnawing off" the tender stems just below the surface of 

 the soil, which caused the plants to fall over and suddenly wither and in 

 one case found a larva that had made its way full length up an amputated 

 stem. A very few adult beetles were observed in the act of feeding on 

 the leaves. The roots of many plants that were large enough to fruit 

 were grooved and scarred in a way to indicate that the Diabrotica larvae 

 had been at work" on these also, the effect being to weaken them and 

 prevent fruiting. Altogether the loss caused by these larvae was very 

 serious, and the owner of the greenhouses quite ready to give up in 

 dispair. 



It seems probable that the eggs from which the larvae observed by me 

 originated, were deposited in the greenhouses by females coming in from 

 without, as in the greenhouse where I observed them destroying young 

 plants, a crop of cucumbers had already been reared since the soil was 

 brought in and this crop only suffered to a slight degree by scarring of 

 the roots, thus indicating, but not by any means proving, that the larvae 

 came from eggs deposited late in the Fall by females that might have 

 entered after all vines outside had been destroyed by the frost. 



/ F. M. Webster. 



