ENTOMOLOGIST AND BOTANIST. 



201 



oz. of powdered hellebore with a pail of water, 

 was ready to proceed. I selected a leaf from 

 two bushes, marked tliem and counted the num- 

 ber of their inhabitants — one was occupied by 

 forty-four worms of ditt'erciit sizes, crowdinj"' it 

 al)ov<^ and below, and it was iibout half eaten; 

 llie other leaf had twelve nearly full firown on 

 it. Having' transferred the mixture of hellebore 

 and water to a waterinji pot, the bushes were 

 sjirinkled with it. I returned to examine the 

 results in three-quarters of an hour, and the leaf 

 wliich at tirst had forty-four on it, had now only 

 two, and these were so far exhausted that they 

 were unable to eat, and could hardly crawl, 

 while ou the other leaf out of the twelve there 

 remained three, but in the same enfeebled con- 

 dition. All around under the bushes, the ground 

 was strewed with the fallen foe, and I felt per- 

 fectly satistied that entire reliance might be 

 placed on this means of defense. 



I did not anticipate such speedy action on the 

 part of the hellebore, or shoidd have returned to 

 the examination sooner, and the bushes were so 

 entirely cleared, that excepting on one I had 

 reserved for another exjieriment, I had no means 

 of repeating the dose. 



There was one thing that struck me as some- 

 what remarkable, the |)ortion of leaf on which 

 the greatest number were feeding, appeared to 

 be of the same size as before the hellebore was 

 applied; if smaller I could not perceive it. When 

 the leaves dry, which liaA'e been sprinkled with 

 liciuid, a very thin coating of the powder, more 

 or less regular, is found over them, and I had 

 always supi)osed that death resulted from eating 

 a portion of the leaf thus coated. Such is un- 

 doubtedly the case when the hellebore is applied 

 dry. Init in this case a meal however small made 

 ]>\\forii/-foHr caterpiUur.'i on half a leaf, must 

 have materially diminished if. I am disposed to 

 lieli(^ve then thai the death of most of tlu'sc 

 must have resulted from their imbibing or ab- 

 sorbing .some of the liquid as soon as applied. 

 Many of them showed symi)toms of the violent 

 cathartic action of the remedy, having a mass of 

 soft excrement hanging to llic extremity of their 

 (U'ad bodies. 



I had reserved one bush, on which were a good 

 number, for another experiment. It sometimes 

 happens, es])ecially with those who live in the 

 country, that hellebore is not at hand when the 

 \\-orms are lirst obs(irved at work, and a few 

 days" delay in i)r<i( iiring it is perhaps unavoida- 

 ble. In such cases the bushes may be entirely 

 leaHess, before the remedy can be applied. Hot 

 water suggested itself to my mind as likely to be 

 of some service, and being also an article readilv 



procurable in every home. It is well known that 

 many plants will bear such an application with- 

 out injury, provided the heat is not too great. 

 Taking some in a watering pot, a little hotter 

 than one could bear th<^ hand in, I showered it 

 plentifully on the afl'ected bush, and it was 

 anuising to see how the caterpillars wriggled 

 and twisted and ([uickly letting go their hold, 

 fell to the ground, whi<:h was soon strewed with 

 them. After the tirst excitement produced by 

 the sudden heat was over, they remained as if 

 washing to " cool otf" before connnencing work 

 again. A few did not recover from the applica- 

 tion, but most of them were soon as active as 

 ever. 



Now what I wo\dd suggest is this, that where 

 the hellebore cannot be at once procured, no time 

 should be lost in applying the hot water, and when 

 once on the gTouud the creatures may have the 

 life trodden out of them by the foot, or beaten 

 out with the spade or some other implement. In 

 any 'case many of them would never reach the 

 bush again, for enemies beset them on every side. 

 I was amused to see how busy a colony of ants 

 were which had a home at the base of a tree near 

 by. lugging these large caterpillai's idong, a sin- 

 gle (me of which would take three or four to 

 manage. The worms w^ere twisting and jmnii- 

 ing about as if they wondered whose hands they 

 had got into, and the ants were hanging on with 

 their sharp jaws and slowly dragging the bodies 

 along. By and by they had quite a little j)ile 

 accunuilated, which would no doubt furnish 

 them or their progeny with a feast of fat things 

 for s(mie time to come. Then there are the tiger 

 beetles {Oiciudelidcv). with a host of others ever 

 running about, looking for stray objects of tliis 

 sort on which to make a dainty meal. 



I had observed on one of the bushes, before 

 a|)|il\ ing the hellebore, some friends at work on 

 these worms. They wi-re inmiatnre specimens 

 of a true bug belonging to the order Jlemiptera. 

 and probably the young of Stiretus firnbriatus. 

 These creatures are neai'ly round. abo>it the size 

 of a connnon ladybii-d. having the head, thorax 

 and legs black, and the abdomen red witli an 

 elongated black spot in the center, divided across 

 ))y a whitish line. Approaching a cateriiillar. 

 thi'y thru.s| their proboscis into it and quietly 

 suck its juices iintil it becomes so weak and ex- 

 hausted that it shrivels ui) and dies. With the 

 view' of testing the probable amount of good 

 these friends were thus cal)al)le of acconq)lisli- 

 ing. 1 shut up two of them in a small box, with 

 a dozen nearly full grown caterpillars, and at the 

 end of three days found that they had consume<l 

 them all; also .six in another box with one bug, 



