lo8 



THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



namely, shifting from one kind of small grain 

 to another, would be a perfectly ett'ectual one. 



Lastly, if the law of the Unity oi^ Haiups be 

 a, false and fallacious law, then no American 

 farmer can of himself find out anything about 

 Ihe habits of any new insect that is infesting 

 his crops, without studying out those habits in 

 detail — which is often a good twelvemonths" job 

 of work. AVe hope it is not now necessary to 

 add, for the information of our regular readers 

 at all events, that, without becoming acquainted 

 with the habits of any particular noxious in- 

 sect, it is folly to attempt to light him. If, on 

 Mic contrary, as we maintain and firmly believe, 

 the great Law of the Unity of Habits be uni- 

 versally true throughout the Animal Kingdom, 

 then a moderate knowledge of Entomology will 

 enable the farmer to tell, at a glance, to what 

 particular group of insects the new species that is 

 in testing his crops belongs ; and he may then infer 

 the habits of the stranger, with a close approxi- 

 mation to accuracy, from the habits of species 

 which arc already well known and are closely 

 allied to that stranger. 



Messieurs the Utilitarians, are yon answored? 



The Remedy. 



\Ve repeat, however, for the benefit of those 

 who like to -'go it blind" and adopt a prescription 

 without knowing the why and the wherefore, 

 that, whenever you discover the stems of your 

 small grain to be badly aft'ected near the root, 

 in the manner shown in Figure 113, a, then you 

 (inght to burn oft" your stubble ground any time 

 before the following summer, and burn ui) all 

 Ihe tailings and refuse straw after threshing. 

 II' you do this, and can persuade your neighbors 

 lo do the same, you will soon kill out the .loiut- 

 worm; if you neglect it, the parasites sent by a 

 kind Providence may perhaps do the work for 

 you; and again it may be possible that, in spite 

 of the parasites, the Joint^worm may increase 

 upon you year after year, as it did in Central 

 Virginia from 1848 to IH.'il, till at length it be- 

 comes an nlinosf unbcai'ablc nuisance. 



Postscript. 

 We have only (o say in conclusion, that we 

 shall be greatly obliged by specimens of Joint- 

 worm work either on Wheat, Kye or IJarley, 

 but especially on the two former plants, from 

 any State in the Uinon, or from any part of the 

 British Provinces to the North of us. There 

 are slill several interesting problems respecting 

 this insect that remain to be definitively solved. 

 I'or example, docs .Joint-worm work ever occur 

 upon Oats":- 



THE WAYY-STRIPED FLE.\-BEETLE. 



(lUdfli-a [Plii/llofivtd] striohtfa. Illi.u'er.) 



This insect appears quite early in the spring, 

 and proves very destructive to many of the 

 garden plants and flowers belonging to the natu- 

 ral order Cuucii'eu.k, and is especially hard on 

 mustard and all kinds of cresses. Common a.s 

 is this Flea-beetle, its transformations had never 

 been observed, in this country, till quite re- 

 cently. A closely allied and very similarly 

 marked species (JIaltica nemoruni, Linn.), 

 occurs in Europe, whore it is known 'as the 

 Turnip Flea-beetle. This last species lives in 

 the larva state, above ground, by mining the 

 leaves of the same kinds of plauts upon which 

 the beetle feeds ; and its transformations were 

 first made known by Mr. H. Le Keux in a valu- 

 able paper published in the Transactions of the 

 Entomological ."Society of London. XtA. II. 

 page 24. 



Our xVmerican species, being so closely allied 

 to that of Europe, Dr. Fitch inferred its habits 

 to be the same, and in his eleventh New York 

 Report, he quotes Le Keux's observations as 

 applying to our insect, and reproduces from 

 Curtis's '-Farm Insects" the figure of a mined 

 turnip leaf, in illustration. In the December 

 (18G8) number of the American Naturalist, 

 however. Dr. Henry Shimer of Mt. Carroll, 

 Ills., shows that our American insect lives in 

 the larva state underground, where it subsists 

 on the roots of plants, iu the same manner as 

 does the larva of the common ('ucumber-beetle 

 (Diii/irofica vittata, Fabr.) ; and we thus see 

 that it is not always safe to judge of an insect's 

 habits by those of its nearest allies. "We have 

 ourselves frequently searched in vain for the 

 larvae on the leaves of both mustard, cre.ss, rad- 

 isli, and lettuce plants that were thickly cov- 

 ered with the perfect beetles, and as Dr. .'^him- 

 er'.s observations arc of interest, we quDtc Ihcm 

 in i)art: 



"The Striped Turnip-bccllo (l'"ig. Ill*") is less 

 than one-tenth of an inch in length. Its gen- 

 eral appearance is bkick, with a broad wavy 

 [Fig. 110] yellowish, or bnft'-colorcd 



■^v y a stripe, on each wing- 



\^/ & ^j^v cover. The larva (Fig.ll!) 

 rtBv \ ^^W^^ b) is white, with a faint 

 /^^K ' I ^ darkened or dusky mc- 



j \ dian line on the anterior 



" '' . '■ half of the bodv, being 



Colors— (<i) black miii buff- , , , ^, " / ^ ^. 



color; (6 iiuu c) whitisb. probably the contents ot 

 the alimentary canal seen through the semi- 

 translucent skin. The head is horny and lighl 

 brown. On the posterior extremity is a brown 



