46 



ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



The farmer no longer dreads the Colorado potato-beetle, Doryphora decem-lineala 



Say (Fig 13> He 

 (knows how to deal 

 with it ; and its 

 numbers are dimi- 

 nishing, thanka to 

 the information 

 spread through the 

 country by entomo- 

 logists, on the use 

 and efficacy o f 

 Paris green. 



It was a remark- 

 able sight, in the 

 early days of the 

 potato-bug visita- 

 tion, to see all the 

 available members 

 of a farmer's house- 

 hold busily engaged in beating' off the " bugs " with small sticks, and catching them in 

 milk cans ; now and again emptying their prey into the fire over which soap was in the 

 making, or pig's food in the cooking. " All was fish that came to net," and so beetles 

 and their parasites — " friends and foes," were — 



"in one red burial blent." 



Men are sometimes surprised to find the potato-beetles feeding on the tomato and 

 tobacco plants in their gardens. The insect in its native haunts fed on the wild potato, 

 Solanum rostratum. Of the Solancece, or Nightshade Family, to which the potato 

 belongs, there are in north America six genera — not counting the South American genua 

 Petunia, now so largely cultivated in gardens. They are (1) Solanum, nightshade; 

 (2) Physalis, ground cherry ; (3) Nicandra, apple of Peru ; (4) Hyoscyamus, henbane ; 

 (5) Datura, thorn apple ; (6) Nicotiana, tobacco. The first of these includes the potato, 

 the egg-plant, and the tomato, all of which are eaten with avidity by the beetle. 

 Deprived of its favourite supplies, the insect turns to such other members of the family 

 as may grow within its reach. I have found it upon Physalis and Datura, as well as 

 upon Nicotiana. 



Of enemies working covertly, the cut-worms are among the most troublesome. They 

 are larvse of certain kinds of Noctuid, or night-flying moths. Whenever a farmer sees a 



Fig 13. 



Fig. 14. 



blade of corn falling over andj turning yellow, or a cabbage-plant bitten of! near the 

 ground, he may be very sure that a cut- worm is working there, and should^ use a spud or 



