THE AJ^IERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



51 



I 



ENTOMOLOGICAL JOTTIXft; 



ities of wliicli are. 

 IS alons in order 

 ed.] 



OxiON Ma(^i;()t.s — Frfuikllii, X. Y., Aiiij. (i, 

 1809.— In April I sowed in my garden twenty- 

 iivo square rods to onions. In June I discov- 

 ered that the onion maggots were working 

 liiidly in this patch, and threatened to destroy 

 the wliole crop. I determined to fight them, 

 and accordingly I provided myself with a 

 trowel and two convenient vessels which I 

 could carry in one hand ; and having filled one 

 vessel with young onions (thinnings), I passed 

 over the whole patch, digging out every aBccted 

 onion and setting a sound one in its place. The 

 alTccted onions were put into tlie empty vessel, 

 and afterwards destroyed by burning. This 

 work was twice repeated, though the first trans- 

 planting was much more onerous than tlie sec- 

 ond ana third. I have reason to believe that 

 the maggots travel from one onion to the next 

 in the row, especially in the early part of the 

 season; fori have observed that if an affected 

 onion is left iu the ground, the next one to it 

 will soon be destroyed, and so on. Later in the 

 season, when tlie onions become larger, there is 

 no necessity for the maggots to travel from one 

 to another, and consequently at that period 

 they do less mischief than in June when the 

 onions are small. J.vs. H. Paksons. 



ChincuBucs — SummerJieUL Sl.Clairrounlij, 

 TIL, June 0th, 1801). — If our farmers would 

 only take your paper, they would in six months' 

 time make one thousand per cent, on the in- 

 vestment. Just as you predicted in No. !) of 

 the Entomologist, the recent heavy rains tliat 

 we have had, from tlie oOth of May to the -ith 

 of June, have operated splendidly upon the 

 Chinch Bugs. A few days before these rains, 

 if you kneeled down and looked near the roots 

 of the wheat, every particle of root seemed to 

 be full of life. Now it is quite a different thing. 

 Last year I had a piece of corn adjoining a 

 wheat-field. As soon as the wheat was cut, the 

 great army of Chinch Bugs immediately com- 

 menced moving upon the corn-field. In spite 

 of ploughing and ditching, I lost three acres of 

 corn out of the fifteen that there was in the 

 whole i)ieL-c. Coi,. Fhkd. IIkckeh. 



Cicada NoTKS—Za?ica*<er, Pa., Aug. 14, 1869 

 — (iuite a number of Periodical Cicadas wen 

 both seen and heard round here the preseni 

 season. A single specimen dropped from- an 

 oak tree on a gentleman's coat-sleeve, in Duf- 

 icy's Park, near Marietta, in this county, on i\\v 

 •1th of June, but it made its escape before I 

 could secure it. In this city quite a number 

 were seen and heard, and also a few seciuzpcf in 

 localities where they were most abundant kiM 

 year. One gentleman dug up quite a numb"r 

 of tlic pupa3 in the early part of May, whi>'h 

 he used for fishing-bait, and they did not difll-i- 

 in any respect from those that were dug up, mi 

 came up of their own accord, last season.' ! 

 regret that I had not an opportunity to qbsnrvc 

 whether the two kinds, that appeared la-i 

 season, made their appearance this scaSoii. 

 The prunings which some fruit trees received 

 last season, on the wliole, were much more 

 beneficial than injurious. With all my 'effjiet-. 

 I have not yet been able to learn of a singic 

 well-authenticated case of Cicadas stinging^Wny 

 Olio in this county, although there had been 

 some idle, irresponsible reports to that eftect. 

 So the whole subject, so fiir as this localitj' is 

 concerned, will, I suppose, have to be postponed 

 for sixteen years at least. Let others meet the 

 question then, for in all human probability I 

 shall have run out all my sands of life before 

 that period arrives. S. S. R. 



GKiANTic TiooT-QoiivAi—Plattaburg, Mo., Oct. 

 13, 18G9. — The Gigantic Root-borer, as described 

 on page 231 of your first volume, is destroying 

 a good many of our apple grafts, set last spring. 

 The root not being large enough for them to 

 work inside of it, they eat out about one-third 

 of tlie bark and hollow out the rest of the root. 

 Our nursery is on prairie, broken in the fall of 

 1807. I am told there are a great many of them 

 plowed up in breaking prairie. I cannot, I 

 think, be mistaken about the identity of the 

 species, for your figure is so good that I recog- 

 nized it immediately, and they diS'er greatly 

 from the common White Grub so called— the 

 larva of the May Beetle. Wm. C. IIolme.s. 



[We have an article already written which 

 will throw some light on this matter, but which 

 will perhaps be crowded out of this number. — 

 Eus.] 



Tent-C.vteupii.laks— OW Wtstbiiry, L.I.,K. 

 Y., June Uh, ISOD.— How we do enjoy the im- 

 munity from caterpillars' nests this spring ! We 

 have only seen five of them this year; in other 

 years we have often destroyed more than five 

 hundred. Isaac Hicks. 



