THE AMEEICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



91 



ber last, from the cocoons on one tomato worm, 

 (Sphinx 5-maculata, Haw.), two hundred and 

 seventy-one small Ichneumon Hies ! If any per- 

 son interesting himself in entomology can beat 

 that for a single brood he may take the belt 

 from me. / 



The Squash Bug. — My last summer's expe- 

 rience in this section with the S(iiiash-bug (C'o- 

 >'e«4' <y/«<w, De Geer), showed no diflercnce in 

 favor of any variety of squashes. I raised the 

 "White-bush Scallop" and found them to be 

 as hard on it as on any other kind. 



The best means that I hit upon of saving my 

 squashes from the pest, was to remove the earth 

 from the roots of the plants as low as it would 

 bear, and fill up with a mixture of dry ashes 

 and salt. Without this precaution I found 

 tliem going down into the ground on the under 

 side of the vine, and working where I could not 

 get at them. 



In addition to the salt and ashes application,. 

 I trimmed oil' all the leaves that touched the 

 ground as soon as they came down, and spread 

 them out under the plants, and upon examina- 

 tion, mornings and evenings, I generally found 

 about all the old bugs nicely housed away be- 

 neath the leaves. I think leaves are far better 

 to trap them under than boards or shingles. A 

 decaying or wilting leaf seems to attract them ; 

 yon will usually find them on such leaves when 

 looking over your vines. 



TOADS vs. BUGS. 



We make the following extracts from some 

 passages in Fogfs book " On Noxious and 

 Ueneficial Animals,'' which are quoted at full 

 length in the fourth number of La NatumUstc 

 Canadien. For the beuefit of the American 

 reader, we translate from the original French. 



"A remarkable fact has lately been published 

 in the newspapers. There is actually a consid- 

 erable commerce in toads between France and 

 England. A toad of good size and in fair con- 

 dition will fetch a shilling [twenty-five cents] 

 in the London market, and a dozen of extra 

 <iuality are worth one pound sterling [five dol- 

 lars]. You may see these imported toads in all 

 the market gardens where the soil is moist, and 

 the owners of those gardens even jirepare shel- 

 ter for them. Many grave persons have shaken 

 their heads, when they heard of this new whim 

 of the English ; but those laugh the best who 

 laugh the last. This time the English are in 

 the right, I used to have in my garden a brown 

 toad as big as my fist. lu the evening he would 



crawl out of his hiding place and travel over a 

 bed in the garden. I kept careful watch over 

 him ; but one day an unlucky woman caught 

 sight of him and killed him with a single stroke 

 other spade, thinking that she had done a very 

 fine thing. He had not been dead many weeks, 

 before the snails ate up all the mignonette that 

 formerly perfumed everything round that bed. 



"Toads become accustomed to man, and do 

 not appear to be incapable of tender sentiments. 

 Everybody has heard the story, which seems 

 borrowed from some old popular legend, of a 

 toad which for thirty years lived under an espa- 

 lier tree, and came out every evening, when the 

 family was taking supper, to get his share of the 

 meal like the dogs and the cats. The family 

 shed tears on the day when an accident deprived 

 that devoted servant of lite. Some of my friends 

 believe that, after having heaped benefits upon 

 a toad, they have obtained from that despised 

 animal evident proofs of gratitude. A certain 

 Capt. Perry has told me that, in traveling 

 through the interior of Sicily, he once found on 

 the road a snake that' was just about to devour 

 a toad. He killed the snake, and the toad went 

 his way. Six days afterwards he returned by 

 the same road. All of a sudden something hops 

 along close behind him. It was his toad, who 

 had adopted this mode of expressing his grati- 

 tude towards his preserver, and who had posi- 

 tively recognized him. ' But, Captain,' I said 

 to him, ' how could you possibly identify the 

 particular toad whose life you had saved? One 

 toad is as like another toad as one egg is like 

 another egg.' ' That is very true,' replied the 

 Captain, ' but he looked at me with such grate- 

 ful eyes, that I could not doubt his identity for 

 a moment.' " 



THE TOMATO-AVORM AGAIN. 



By way of specimen brick, we print here one 

 of the many ridiculous paragraphs about this 

 poor slandered and vilified Tomato-worm, with 

 which the newspapers always abound at a certain 

 time of the year. The accuracy of its Natural 

 History is only excelled by the accuracy of its 

 English Grammar. It will be noticed that in 

 the last sentence there is a stray nominative 

 case, "a tomato," looking about in vain for 

 some verb with which it can agree. We scarcely 

 know which to pity most, the nominative case or 

 the Tomato-worm. And then think of that most 

 absurd assertion, that the Tomato-worm — which 

 has been well known to Entomologists for about 

 half a century— "was first discovered this 

 season! ! ! " 



