THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



51 



ENTOMOLOGICAL JOTTINfiS. 



[We propose to publish from time to time, uiulor 

 the aliove heading, siiuli cxtra(l> IVnm tho li'ttcrs uf our 

 correspondents as contain entuninlu^iiMl lads wcu-tliy 

 to be recorded, on aceoiuit I'itliiT olllicir si'iiiitilii- oV 

 of their praclic'al iniiiortamc, Vi\- liupc oiu- readurs 

 will contribute oai-li lliiir several mites towards thegen- 

 eral fund, and i]i lasc they arc not perlcctly certain of 

 the names of tlic iuMits, the peculiarities of which are 

 to be mentioned, will send specimens along in (irdcr 

 that each species nniy be duly identiticd.] 



Onion Macjoots — Frnnklin, N. Y., Aug. (i, 

 18C9. — In April I sowed in my garden tweiity- 

 flve square rods to onions. In June I discov- 

 ered that the onion maggots were working 

 badly in this patch, and threatened to destroy 

 the whole 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 tilled one 

 vessel with young onions (thinnings), I passed 

 over the whole patch, digging out every affected 

 onion and setting a sound one in its place. The 

 afl'ected onions wore put into tlie empty vessel, 

 iind afterwards destroyed b.\' burning. This 

 work was twice repeated, though the first trans- 

 planting was much more onerous than the sec- 

 ond and third. 1 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 ; for I have observed that if an affected 

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

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

 season, when the onions become larger, there is 

 no necessity for the maggots to travel from one 

 to another, and consequently at that period 

 tliey do less mischief than in June when the 

 oirions are small. Jas. II. Pak.sons. 



Chinch Bu(;s — Summer/ield, Si. Clair county, 

 III., June iJth, 1800. — 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 that 

 we have had, from the .'iutli of Jlay to the 4th 

 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 tliree acres of 

 corn out of the fifteen that there was in the 

 whole piece. Coi.. FitKii. IIicikkh. 



Cicava'Notes— Lancaster, Pa., Aug. 14, 18G9. 

 —Quite a number of Periodical Cicadas were 

 both seen and heard round here the present 

 season. A single specimen dropped from an 

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

 fey's Park, near Marietta, in this county, on the 

 4tli 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 secured in 

 localities where they were most abundant last 

 year. One gentleman dug up quite a number 

 of the pupa3 in the early part of May, which 

 he used for fishing-bait, and they did not difler 

 in any respect from those tliat were dug up, or 

 came up of their own accord, last season. I 

 regret that I hud not an opportunity to observe 

 whether the two kituls, that appeared last 

 season, made their appearance this season. 

 The pruuings which some fruit trees received 

 last season, on the whole, were much more 

 beneficial than injurious. With all my efforts, 

 I have not yet been able to learn of a single 

 well-authenticated case of Cicadas stinging any 

 one in this county, although there had been 

 some idle, irresponsible reports to that eflfect. 

 So the whole subject, so far as this locality 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 1 

 shall have run out all my sands of life before 

 that period arrives. S. S. R. 



GioANTio liooT-BoREii—Plattsburff, Mo., Oct. 

 1:3, ISCD. — The Gigantic lloot-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 the bark and hollow out the rest of the root. 

 Our nursery is on prairie, broken in the fall of 

 18C7. 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 differ greatly 

 from the common White Grub so called — the 

 larva of the May Beetle. Wm. C. Holmes. 



[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-CATKuruxARs— OW Westbury, L. I., X. 

 Y., June 6th, 1869. — 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 Hrks. 



