28 



THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Ttoe Trumpet Grape-g'all — D, McOlaine, Pier- 

 mont, If. T. — The reddish-brown, elongate-conical 

 galls about one-third of an inch long, growing in con- 

 siderable numbers from the leaf of a wild grape-vine, 

 and which we represent at Figure 27, have long been 



[Fig. 27 ] 



known to us, and are described in our manuscripts 

 under the name of the Trumpet Grape-gall ( Vitis 

 litmis) . Like the other three grape-gaUs which we have 

 figured, one of them in number 12 and the other two 

 ill number 6 of our lirst Volume, (pages 106, 107 and 

 2i7,) it is made by a Gall-gnat (Cecidomyia) — thus 

 further exemplifying the truth of the general law, 

 that when one species of any particular gall-making 

 genus of insects is found to inhabit a particular genus 

 of plants, many more species of the same gall-making 

 genus can generally be met with ou the same genus ot 

 plants. Specimens of this same Trumpet Grape-gall, 

 said to occur on the Isabella grape-vine, were received 

 by us three years ago from J. H . Foster, of Pennsyl- 

 vania, as noticed in the Practical Entomologist , I. p. 101. 

 We have seen very similar galls on a wild grape which 

 wo took for the Frost Grape ( V. cordifolia) . Two years 

 ago, a very similar kind of gall, said to grow on the 

 "Texas Mustang Grape-vine," were received by us 

 from M. W. Phillips, of Mississippi. These last, how- 

 ever, differed in being green (not brown), and in grow- 

 ing in bunches of three or four (not promiscuously) on 

 the leaf. {%ee Pract. Entom. II. p. 102). Several galls 

 resembling yours and made like yours by Gall-gnats, 

 one of which has been described by Osten Sacken as 

 the Blood-red Hickory Gall (Sanguinolenta) , and is of 

 nearly the same crimson color as the Trumpet Grape- 

 gall, occur on the leaves of different species of Hickory; 

 and we are acquainted with two such galls that grow ou 

 Hackberry leaves, 



Grape-toerry Mott— -ff. 0. £ar/iard,M. P., Charles- 

 ton, i2Z.— The worms which you sent, and which are 

 injuring your grapes by boring into the berries, are the 

 larvie of the Grape-berry Moth (Pentluna, m'titorana, 

 Pack.) of which we gave an illustrated account, with 

 suggestions for its prevention, in our first volume, pp. 

 177-0. 



Oalc Pmuer — T. J. Plumb, Madison, Wis. — Yolir 

 insect is the common Oak Primer (Elaphidion putator. 

 Peck), of which you will find an account in Harris's 

 Treatise on Injurious Insects, p. 98. 



Potato Bugrs — Win. B. SJielmire, TougUinamon, 

 Pa. — The blister-beetle which infests your potatoes so 

 grievously and also your tomato vines, is, as you sup- 

 pose, the very same Striped Blister-beetle {Lytta m'ttata) 

 which we gave an account of in No. 2 of our 1st vol- 

 ume, page 24, where a figure of the insect will be found. 

 In Central Illinois, in the year 1868, we heard of an 

 entire field of potatoes being utterly destroyed by this 

 species in a single day. The tomato being so closely 

 allied to the potato, it is not at all strange that you find 

 this little pest to like it about as well as the potato, 

 seeing that most of the BHster-beetles are pretty 

 miscellaneous feeders. Your statement that it prefers 

 other varieties of potato to the Mercer, or Neshannock 

 as we call it out West, corresponds with the laet which 

 we published in the passage just now referred to, 

 namely, that it prefers other varieties of potato to the 

 Peachblow, It would be a curious enquiry which of 

 the two it would take, if it were absolutely restricted to 

 Mercers and Peachblows. The only approved remedy 

 against all the different kinds of potato-eating Blister- 

 beetles, which are no less than Ave in number — namely, 

 the Striped, the Ash-gray, the Black-rat, the Black, 

 and the Margined BUster-beetle — is to drive them to 

 leeward with brush into some dry hay or straw previ- 

 ously prepared for their reception, and then to set fire 

 to the dry stuff' and burn them all up. 



The whitish 16-legged larva, nearly an inch in length 

 and with its head and the first ring of its body mahogany 

 brown, which you found burrowing in a potato stalk, 

 is unknown to us. All that we can at present say is, 

 that it would have produced some kind of moth if it 

 had lived to maturity. As you suggest, it is quite 

 different from the common Stalk Corer iulestiug the 

 potato, which we figured and described on page 22 ol 

 our first voliune, this last larva being distinctly striped 

 lengthwise with black. If you had packed this larva 

 of yours according to our printed directions, in a small 

 tight tin box along with a little of its natural food, it 

 would have doubtless reached us in good health, and we 

 could have probably bred it sooner or later to the moth 

 state. As it wan, you packed it along with a small 

 morsel of potato stalk and a very large allowauce of 

 cotton wool, in a pasteboard box. Consequently, long 

 before the three days expired, which it takes Uncle 

 Sam to travel from Pennsylvania to Ilhnois, the poor 

 unfortunate lar\a had perished, partly of starvation 

 but principally of drought. If you had replaced the 

 cotton wool by pieces of potato stalks, retaining the 

 pasteboard box, the insect might perhaps have reached 

 us alive; but the cotton wool effectually did its business. 

 You might as well pack a trout in dry sand and expect 

 it to live and flourish, as pack the inhabitant of a juicy 

 potato stalk in dry cotton wool, and believe that it will 

 not give up the ghost in a very short time. 



Blood-sucking Cone-nose — G, W. C, , Alton, 

 III. — Yes, the bug which by its "bite" caused your 

 nephew's arm to swell so badly, is the above insect, 

 which was figured in Ajiekican Entomologist, "Vol. 

 I. p. 88, (Fig. 74.) The fact that for a year after the bite 

 the child's arm would swell in the same place, whenever 

 he was unwell, is singular. Your observations about 

 the perfect winged Bug preying on the common Bed- 

 bug are new, but corroborate our inference that, in the 

 larval and pupal states, this species probably sucks the 

 juices of other insects. 



