l893-] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 229 



DEPARTMENT OF EGONOMIG ENTOMOLOGY. 



Edited by Prof. JOHN B. SMITH,. Sc D., New Brunswick, N. J. 



The Sammer of 1893. — It is perhaps somewhat early to characterize the 

 present season, and yet it has proved itself an extremely interesting one 

 in many particulars. The intense cold of the Winter of 1S92-93 led many 

 to believe that there would be quite a wholesale destruction of insects, 

 and in some cases this seems to have proved true. Yet, on the other 

 hand, insects like the potato beetle were as numerous as ever, and the 

 striped Diabrotica was not perceptibly affected. Epilachne borealis, on 

 the other hand, became a rare insect, and only an occasional specimen 

 here and there, was visible. Systeiia blanda assumed the dimensions of 

 a pest in some parts of New Jersey, and attacked a very great variety of 

 plants. In one case an entire crop of carrots was destroyed. Beets were 

 considerably eaten; canteloupe and other cucurbs were quite generally 

 infested, and even corn was attacked. Nothing suffered worse than the 

 Pig Weed, though I heard no complaints of the injury caused on this par- 

 ticular crop. The Elm leaf beetle wintered in excellent condition, and 

 made its appearance in very great numbers. Trees suffered more than 

 ever at New Brunswick, and in some cases there remained not a leaf on 

 the trees on July 15th. In many places the ground was covered with the 

 fallen leaves as in Autumn, and the trees had a desolate appearance. In 

 fact, as a rule, insects hibernated well, and there is every reason why that 

 should be so. The steady cold maintained the continued torpidity of the 

 species hibernating in the adult stage, and preserved from the danger of 

 being crushed by the heaving of wet ground those species that wintered 

 as subterranean pupae. 



The Relation of Insect Attacks and Plant Diseases.— It has been observed, 

 time and again, that weakly plants suffered most from insect attack, while 

 vigorous healthy plants appeared free, or nearly so. Of course this may 

 be in a very great measure due to the fact that, by means of its abundant 

 vitality, the healthy plant is capable of sustaining an amount of injury 

 which would be fatal to a weakling; but this is by no means universally 

 true. I have frequently noticed on a considerable variety of plants that 

 the smaller and less thrifty contained the greater number of specimens 

 of the injurious species, and this, where the original stunting of the plan^ 

 was not due to the insect attack. I have also noticed that in many cases 

 plants attacked by fungous or bacterial diseases prove especially attractive 

 to insets I found, in an onion field for instance, a small number of 

 specimens with a bacterial disease beginning at the heart of the bulb. 

 These bulbs were in aImo.st every case covered by white mites, which 

 seems to find these plants much more to their taste than neighboring 

 healthy bulbs on which very few, if any, examples were to be found. 

 These same plants, too, became, in a somewhat later stage, food for the 



