THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



249 



Parasites on "Hateful Grasshopper"— A. 



A". FiniH-in-r. WhitesriUe, Andi-ew county, Jfo.— The deep 

 searlet-rod parasites wliich you find attiickiuj,' the grass- 

 hoppers ( Ciiloptenus spretus) , and which, as you say , are 

 causing said grasshoppers to rapidly die off, are mites 

 belonging to the same class {Arachnida), of articulate 

 animals as the spider. They have evidently but six legs, 

 and we have found parasites under the wings of the 

 common house fly in this country, which scarcely dif- 

 fered from them. We believe these parasites have 

 never been described, but as similar six-leu'jred red 

 mites belonging to LatreiUe's gniiis .(,</,,„,(. ai.- known 

 to atlai'k the house-fly and other jommI- in Kunipr. 

 ours in all probability belong to the same -enus, anil the 

 Senior Editor has suggested the name ol Adoma locus- 

 tarum for the species in question. (See Practical Ento- 

 mologist, yoX. 1, p. 126). These mites liave been very 

 .ciiiniion the present year ou the Uatefiil or Colorado 

 (;la^sl^opper, and we have received specimens of the 

 latter irom Holt county, Mo., so thickly covered 

 « ith the mites, that we have no doul)t that they seri- 

 ously aflfected the health of the ' ' hoppers, ' ' 



Crippled Moths— (7/»as. P. Faulhier, Bn^hjeport. 

 Conft.— The wings of almost all moths will liiil to ex- 

 pand to their proper proportions , if, ou bursting forth 

 fl-om the pupH state, the moths have no facilities for 

 climbing so as to allow their wings to hang down, wliile 

 the fluids of the body are gradually being disseminated 

 throu^'h the appropriate channels. A large heavy moth, 

 like the Poli/phemus, would probably be unable to climb 

 the sides of a glass jar, but almost all small insects will do 

 so with ease . The popular idea»Orat house-flies have 

 .lir-pumps in their paws, to enable them to walk up 

 glass window-, i- a myth! It has been proved that 



they 1 "allv u|' ilie sides of an exhausted receiver; 



andbe-el'-. nian\ iu-^eets without any pad (onychium) 

 between llieii' laisal claws walk upon glass ijs readily as 

 a house-lly In all such eases, the tarsal claws seize 

 hold of the small roughnesses in the glass, which arc im- 

 perceptible to the naked eye. 



Insects on the Oleander— 7". W. Gordon.— The 



flattened ov.al scales attached so thickly to the leaves of 



CFig- 185.] your Oleander, are a foreign species of 



« bark-louse. A little diluted kerosene 

 T —say one part water and one of kero- 

 1 sene — would perhaps be the best thing 

 to kill them and thus cleanse your plants. 

 The black beetle of form and siz(^ of a 

 *^°'T^.dS ""* split pea, with two blood-red spotson the 

 wing-covers, is the Twice-stabbed Lady bird. (Sec 

 Fig. 185). It was undoubtedly preying on the bark-lice, 

 and if unmolested would soon have cleared the plant. 

 Insects found on Apple Tree — /. W. Waters, 

 Springfield, Mo. — No. 1 are the eggs of the Rapacious 

 Soldier Bug (Reduvius raptatorius. Say,) which you will 

 Hiid illustrated on page 207, Figure 142. No. 2 is the 

 Twice-stabbed Lady-bird {Chilocorm himlnerm, Muls.) 

 which is figured above, (Fig. 18.i). They are both ben- 

 etteial insects, and were doubtless preying on the plant- 

 lice on your trees. 



Beetles Named^/. M. Shaffer, Fairfield, Iowa.— 

 The beetle that comes into your house in great numbers 

 is Agonoderus palUpes, Fabr. The black blister beetles 

 caught last fall on '-Rag- weed" are Liffta ntrata, 

 Fabr. 



Ctigrantic Wat 



IF/.V.— The large 



Bugr — E. M. Downing, Beloit, 

 of which you can find neither 

 description or name, and 

 which would eat no- 

 thing that was given to 

 it. i.s'thc Gigantic Water 

 VM'j^{r..lo.'<lo,,ui',ir,indie.) 

 It lives in th<- water 'nd 

 feeds Ol 



sm 



aquatic 



mats. As we are i 

 and anon receiving 

 insect for detenu 

 tion . we reproi 

 herewith its photogr 

 (Fig. 186.) by whic 

 may at once be rei 

 nized by the rest of 

 readers . 



W^ormeatingri 

 green Tomato* 



D. L. Hall. Alton. 

 —The worm eating 

 yovir green tomatoei 

 not as you suggest 

 Coior-LiKiii-brovvn; BoU-worm describf 



last number, but that rascally Stalk-borer {Got 

 nitela , Guen . ) , which bores into such a variety of p 

 and which we have on several occasions referred 

 (See especially Figs. 11 and 140.) It has long been kn 

 to bore into the stalk of the Tomato, but now you 

 to its crimes that of attacking the fruit, and we 1 

 this summer found it even boring into the fruit of 

 Strawberry . 



miscellaneous- ^T^t^o. W. Copley, Alton, llh'.- 

 golden green • ' bugs with the Fenian uniform , ' ' v 

 you found quite plenty amongst your standing w 

 iire Chrymchus auratus, Fabr., or the Gilded' Chtj» 

 chus. These beetles belong to the great Chrysom 

 family and feed on the leaves of the Dog's-rar' 

 (Apocyaum androsmmifolium) , but their larval habits «■ 

 we believe, unknovra. The black prickly cateriM| 

 found on a rose bush is the larva of the Buck MnV; 

 heretofore referred to. The yellow louse which 

 badly crumpling the leaves of the Red currant, i^ ' 

 Currant Plant-louse {ApUs rihis, Linn.), lougknovn 

 thus attack the Currant both in this country and w 

 Europe, but never known to occur on the closely allied 

 Gooseberry. The apples you send were aflfected with 

 the common apple rust. The common form of this rust 

 is caused by a microscopic plant of fungoid growth, 

 but a very similar appearance is caused, as we know 

 from experience, by the shallow guawings of a small 

 grass-green worm which produces a yellowish-brown 

 moth (Zoxotmma rosaceana, Harr) . It is the normal habit 

 of this worm to fold up and devour the leaf, but it is also 

 very fond of gnawing off the rind of green apples, and 

 such gnawed places soon become brown and rusty and 

 sometimes crack. 



A mixed mess— Z'. F. F., Hamilton . —The insects 

 you sent presented a most heterogeneous and broken 

 appearance on their arrival, the inevitable result of the 

 loose manner of packing. We cannot undertake to 

 name or say anything about dried specimens of insects 

 that are not well packed and numbered . 



