756 



REPORT UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



Dr. G. Liucecum, who has given in the Practical Entomologist (vol. i^ 



p. 110) the following account of its 

 habits : 



" The year before last they got into 

 my garden and utterly destroyed 

 my cabbage, radishes, mustard, seed- 

 turnips, and every other cruciform 

 plant. Last year I did not set any of 

 that order of plants in my garden. 

 But the present year, thinking that 

 the bugs had probably left the prem- 

 ises, I planted my garden with rad- 

 ishes, mustard, and a variety of cab- 

 bages. By the 1st of April the mus- 

 After tard and radishes were large enough 

 for use, and I discovered that the in- 

 1 began picking them off" by hand and 



Fig. 27. — Harlequin 

 larva; h, pit pa ; c. 

 size and magnified : 

 Riley. 



sect had commenced on them 



Cabbage-Bug. a, 

 d, e, eggs, natural 

 g, h, adult. 



tramping them under foot. By that means I have preserved my four 

 hundred and thirty-four cabbages, but I have visited every one of 

 them daily now for four months, finding on them from thirty-four to 

 sixty full-grown insects every day, some coupled, and some in the act 

 of depositing their eggs. Although many have been hatched in my 

 garden the present season, I have suffered none to couie to maturity, 

 and the daily supplies of grown insects that I have been blessed with 

 are immigrants from some other garden. 



'' The perfect insect lives through the winter, and is ready to deposit 

 its eggs as early as the 13th of March, or sooner, if it finds any cruci- 

 form plant large enough. They set their eggs on end in two rows, 

 cemented together, mostly on the under side of the leaf, and generally 

 from eleven to twelve in number. In about six days in April — four 

 days in July — there hatches out from these eggs a brood of larvae re- 

 sembling the perfect insect, except in having no wings. This brood 

 immediately begins the work of destruction by piercing and sucking 

 the life-sap from the leaves; and in twelve days they have matured. 

 They are timid, and will run off and hide behind the first leaf, stem, or 

 any part of the plant that will answer the purpose. The leaf that they 

 puncture immediately wilts, like the effects of poison, and soon withers. 

 Half a dozen grown insects will kill a cabbage in a day. They continue 

 through the summer, and sufficient perfect insects survive the winter to 

 insure a full crop of them for the coming season. * * * * I have as 

 yet found no way to get clear of them but to pick them off" by hand." 



It has spread northward from Texas into Missouri, appearing there, ac- 

 cording to Riley, in 1870. Mr. Uhler (List of Hemiptera, p. 24) says that 

 it inhabits Guatemala, Mexico, Texas, Arizona, Indian Territory, Califor- 

 nia, Nevada, Colorado, and from Delaw are to Florida and Louisiana. 

 " la the Atlantic region," he adds, " this species seems to be steadily 

 but slowly advancing northward. Its introduction into Maryland has 

 been eff"ected since the late war, and now it is known as far north as 

 the vicinity of the Pennsylvania boundary-line in Delaware. In the 

 Mississippi Valley it appears to be equally common, particularly in the 

 States of Illinois and Missouri." I found it to be not uncommon at 

 Golden, Colo., in the summer of 1875, and it will probably be destruct- 

 ive there soon. 



Descripiion. — " The larva is of a uniform pale-greenish color, marked with polished 

 black. The pupa differs from it only in some of the pale marks inclining to orange, 

 and in the possession of conspicuous wiug-jiads ; and they both differ from the mature 



