98 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



remember the first one I ever saw; it must have been in the summer of 1872. I was then 

 a little chap attending school on the historic battle field of Lundy's Lane, and I little knew 

 then that I had met an enemy that would refuse to be driven from the country, for their 

 invasion was one not only of conquest but colonization wherever they went. 



A few beetles were sent to us last summer which were covered with a very interesting 

 parasite known as Uropoda Americana. These are little mites about the size of a small 

 pin-head, and of a flax seed brown colour. Each beetle was so thickly covered with them 

 that hardly any part of its body was visible. The infested beetles were placed upon a 

 potato plant along with some of their healthy relatives in hopes that their enemies might 

 increase and subdue them, but after a few days the infested beetles had disappeared and 

 the parasites with them, while the healthy beetles fed on serenely. 



6. Grasshoppers. — The grasshoppers belong to the Orthoptera or straight-winged 

 insects. Of these we have a great many species, but they may all be grouped into two 

 families — the Acridiie or short-horned grasshoppers, and the Locustidae or long-horned 

 grasshoppers. 



There has been much confusion of terms in the common names applied to these insects. 

 The term locust properly applies to the first family, and not to the Locustidse, or long horned 

 grasshoppers. The term locust is also improperly applied to the Cicada, which belongs to 

 another order altogether. To all but entomologists, however, the members of both families 

 are usually known as grasshoppers, and for convenience in this paper we shall use that 

 general term. 



The most common species with us is the Melanoplus, 

 femur-rubrum, the red-legged grasshopper, or, more properly 

 speaking, locust. 



The females of this species deposit their eggs in holes 

 made in the ground by means of their ovipositors. The 

 Fig. 66. eggs are laid in masses in the fall of the year, and hatch 



during the following spring or early summer. The young do not undergo complete meta- 

 morphosis, or change of form, as do the insects of the other orders we have mentioned. 

 There is no larval stage ; the young make their appearance as little grasshoppers without 

 wings. They pass through several moults, and the wings gradually develop. With 

 the last moult they become full fledged, and their destructiveness is then increased by 

 their increased powers of locomotion. 



Grasshoppers are more or less troublesome every year in all parts of the country, but 

 they are usually particularly plentiful in localities where there is much waste land or poor 

 farming. Two years ago I wheeled through the country from Walkerton to Clarksburg, a 

 distance of about fifty miles There was then in many places through which I passed 

 almost another plague of locusts or grasshoppers. In conversation with a farmer whom I 

 met I learned there were in some sections of that country quite a number of abandoned 

 farms, where grasshoppers had been breeding year after year unmolested. Upon these 

 farms they ate everything bare and then spread to adj oining farms. Good farming with 

 clean cultivation and short rotation of crops is one of the best means of avoiding a grass- 

 hopper plague. On the College farm here Mr. Eennie tells me that since the fences have 

 been removed, the permanent pastures broken up, and a short rotation of crops adopted, 

 hardly a grasshopper could be found, whereas the old fence bottoms and permanent pastures 

 were formerly alive with them. 



7. Aphids, or Plant-Lick. — Probably the most widely distributed and generally 

 inj arious insects during the past two years have been the Aphids, or plant-lice. They are 

 members of the family Aphididae, belonging to the section Homoptera, in the order 

 Hemiptera. This section or sub-order Homoptera includes not only the Aphids but all of 

 the bark lice, scale insects, mealy bugs, and leaf hoppers, some of the most injurious 

 insects, and at the same time some of the most difficult to fight. 



They are characterized, in common with all the other insects of this order, by a 

 suctorial mouth, with which they take all their food in a liquid form, sucking it as juice 



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