316 Forty-sixth Report on the State Museum 



MeniecUes. — So destructive to cabbage and so difficult to combat is 

 this insect, that its advance northward into territory yet unoccupied 

 by it should be resisted by every means that can be efficiently 

 employed, and by hand-picking when every other remedy seems to 

 fail The arsenites are powerless against it, as it belongs to the suc- 

 torial class which feed through a beak and not with biting jaws. 

 Experiments that I have made with pyrethrum and hellebore have shown 

 but transitory effects, and fail to kill. Kerosene emulsion would prob- 

 ably prove equally valueless. In my First Report, before cited, the 

 following recommendations were made, as the best methods known for 

 attacking it: 1. Sprinkling with hot water of as high a temperature as 

 the plants will bear. -2. Trapping with leaves plucked from the plants 

 and spread on the ground, beneath which the bugs will retire on cold 

 nights, and where they may be found in the morning and killed. 

 3. Burning the waste leaves, stalks, and weeds in the autumn, in which 

 many of the adult insects pass the winter. 4. Destroying the first 

 brood in the early spring by crushing the eggs. These may easily be 

 found on the leaves, as they are conspicuous from their beautiful orna- 

 mentation, being white, tinged with green apically, surrounded by two 

 sharply defined black bands of which the upper one is the broader, and 

 having the apex bordered upon its depressed lid with a black crescent. 

 The eggs are placed on end on the leaves fastened to one another, and 

 often arranged in two rows of six each. With this description of the 

 eggs, they can be easily recognized, and not mistaken for any others. 

 5. The hibernating bugs, when first resorting to the plants for ovipo- 

 sition, should be picked off by hand, or if too abundant for this, which 

 they seldom are at this time, as many that go into winter quarters fail 

 to survive its rigors and the enemies to which they are exposed, they 

 may be knocked off the plants with a stick into a pan of water and 

 kerosene. — {^Gountry Gentleman of June 9, 1892.) 



A new reniedi/. — Mr. H. E. \Yeed, Entomologist of the Mississippi 

 Agricultural Experiment Station, premising that "• there is but one 

 efficient remedy for this insect, which is to destroy the brood which 

 lives over winter" before their oviposition, has proposed a method 

 which he has found successful in controlling "by far the worst cabbage 

 pest of the South." It certainly gives promise of being the most 

 simple and effective method yet discovered. Mr. Weed recommends 

 that a row of mustard or radish plants be run on the sides or through 

 the middle of the cabbage patch or field, and as the Murgantia will be 

 drawn to these in preference to the cabbage, — when they have collected 

 thereon, tliey may be killed by the application of kerosene. It does 



