1894 ] Entomology. 279 
ENTOMOLOGY ' 
The Four-lined Leaf-bug.—Another satisfactory monograph of 
a hitherto little-known injurious insect comes from the Cornell Univer- 
sity Agricultural Experiment Station.? Mr. Slingerland „reports that 
Pæcilocapsus lineatus has been destructive to currant foliage in New 
York for several years, sometimes rivalling, in damage done, the 
common currant-worm. Bushes on the university grounds “ looked as 
though a fire had swept over them, leaving the prominent topmost 
leaves brown and dead.” Such injury checks the growth of the bushes 
and materially lessens their productive capacity the following season. 
The past history of the insect is reviewed at some length, the discussion 
showing that it has been recognized as a destructive species for many 
rs. 
The four-lined leaf-bug shows an extraordinary range of food-plants, 
54 species being listed as attacked by it. “ Botanically considered, 
these lists are of interest, as they show an exceedingly wide range of’ 
food-plants for a single species of insect. Rarely do we find an insect 
attacking indiscriminately so many different plants with such widely 
different characteristics. The fifty-four species of plants represent 
forty-nine genera in thirty-one different families of the Flowering 
Plants. The Gymnosperms, like the pine, etc., are not represented, 
and but one genus (Hemerocallis) of the Monocotyledons. Fourteen 
of the plants are useful for food or medicine; twenty-nine are orna- 
mental; while but eleven are wild species. Thus the beneficial results 
from the attack, rarely severe, of the insect upon the weeds, so termed, 
is slight compared with its frequently very injurious attacks upon the 
cultivated plants.” 
“ The insect usually makes its first appearance in New York about 
the middle of May on the newest, tenderest terminal leaves. The in- 
sects are then so small and active in hiding themselves that they are 
not apt to attract attention. Their work, however, soon becomes 
apparent. Minute semi-transparent darkish spots appear on the ter- 
minal leaves. These spots are scarcely larger than a commonpin’s 
head, and are round or slightly angular in shape, depending upon the 
direction of the minute veinlets of the leaf which bound them. The 
insect has inserted its beak into the leaf and sucked out nearly all of 
the opaque green pulp or parenchyma of the interior within a small 
area bounded by the little veinlets.’ These spots later turn brown 
‘Edited by Clarence M. Weed, New Hampshire College, Durham . H. 
? Bull. 58. The Four-lined Leaf- bug. By Mark Vernon Slingerland. October, 
1893. 
