THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



. 51 



And even in these more enlightened modern 

 days, the periodical press, as we saw just now, 

 asserts that thcj' "devour every f/reen thhir/ that 

 comes in their way!!" 



In reality, almost tlie whole amount of 

 damage that our American so-called "Locusts" 

 do to vegetation, is by the females depositing 

 their eggs in a double row in longitudinally ar- 

 ranged holes, which they bore for that very 

 purpose with their long ovipositors (Fig.;J3 6) 

 in the twigs of various fruit trees aud forest 

 trees, as in Fig. 54. Such twigs, in consequence 

 of the mechanical excavation of their substance, 

 very generally die, and eventually break off 

 and fall to the ground. When the trees are of 

 any considerable size, this does not produce any 

 injurious results, and may probably enough in 

 many cases bo even beneficial to them by oper- 

 ating after the fashion of a summer pruning. 

 But small trees, of only an inch or two diame- 

 ter at their buts, are not unfrcquently much 

 damaged by losing so many of their twigs 

 tlirough the persevering industry of the female 

 "Locusts" or Cicadas. As to the "growing- 

 crops " of anything else but young fruit trees or 

 young forest trees being ever " destroyed " by 

 these insects, that is a pure fiction, due partly 

 to the popular ignorance on the subject of the 

 Natural History of Insects, and partly to the in- 

 extricable confusion between our bogus "Lo- 

 custs " and the true genuine " Locusts "' of fhe 

 Old World. 



If the American Entomologist did no other 

 good, than merely to disentangle the popular 

 jumble between the bogus Locusts of the 

 United States and the veritable Locusts of the 

 ancient continents, it surely ought to be well 

 worth the subscription price to every one of its 

 readers. Suppose that a hostile army was 

 every year invading a certain district in the 

 Union, sometimes marching against one State, 

 sometimes against another ; surely in tliat case 

 the citizens of every State would be willing to 

 pay one dollar apiece, for the sake of being re- 

 liably guaranteed that the invading army would 

 never do them or their neighbors any damage 

 of any consequence. Now, every region in the 

 Union is in certain years — the particular year 

 varying according to the particular region — 

 invaded by prodigious swarms of our so-called 

 "Locusts;" and the popular belief is that tliese 

 terrible little creatures, whenever they appear, 

 are likely enough to devour bodily all the crops. 

 Surely then every citizen in this whole country 

 can afford to pay a trifle, to have his mind dis- 

 abused of such ridiculous and unfounded ter- 

 rors, and to learn that a single swarm of Hate- 



ful Grasshoppers, swooping down from the 

 Rocky Mountains on the wings of the west 

 wind upon the fertile plains of Kansas and 

 Nebraska, and the western parts of Missouri 

 and Iowa, is more to be dreaded by the farmer, 

 than all the "Locusts" or Cicadas that have 

 ever existed in America since the days of Chris- 

 topher Columbus. 



< ♦ ♦ — ■ 



A FRIEND UNMASKED. 



BY THE SENIOR EDITOR. 



In No. 2 of the American Entomologist I 

 took occasion to figure aud describe a very in- 

 teresting larva, which had been found by Mr. E. 

 Leming, in South Illinois, preying in great 

 numbers on the larva of the Curculio. I there 

 stated that I thought that this larva would prove 

 to bo that of some species or other of a group of 

 soft-shelled beetles (Telephorus family), which 

 is common everywhere in the Northern States. 

 I have since been fortunate enough to breed the 

 larva itself to maturity ; and it i)roves to be the 

 Pennsj'lvania Soldier-beetle {Chmdiognathus 

 23ennsylvanicus, DeGeer; Fig. 5oi), a species be- 

 longing to the very same family to which I had 

 supposed that our larva rightfully appertained. 



[FiR. r.r. ] 



Colors— (a) Rich reddish brown ; (i) yellow and black. 



That our readers may catch at a glance tliis good 

 friend of theirs, both in the preparatory larval 

 state and iu the perfect beetle state, and thus be 

 prepared to protect and cherish him in whatever 

 dress they may find liim, we repeat above the 

 drawing (Fig. 65 «) of the larva given in No. 2, 

 page 35. The scientific description of it will be 

 found in the^ second foot-note appended to that 

 page. Letters b to h in Fig. 2 show the pai;ts 

 magnified. 



The Soldier-beetles ( Telephorus family) all of 

 them have a strong general resemblance to the 

 Pennsylvania Soldier-beetle, and all of them 

 differ from the great mass of the order of Beetles 

 {Coleoiitera) , with the exception of the Blister- 

 beetles {Lytta family) , aud the Lightning-bugs 

 {Lampyris family) , in being of a soft and parch- 

 ment-like, instead of a hard and shelly consist- 

 ence. According to LeConte's latest revision, 

 there are 98 species of them found in North 

 America, only 7 of which belong to the same 

 genus as our little hero, the remaining 90 being 



