195 
not a specimen was found in the city, or close to it, and it is certain 
that the sparrows are responsible for this fact. On one occasion I 
brought in about a dozen specimens and put them on the piazza for the 
children to play with. It delighted them for a time, but one after the 
other made its escape and flew for the trees in front of the house; not 
a specimen ever got beyond the first or second tree. Most of them 
were captured by the sparrows before reaching the first tree and were 
torn to pieces. One or two of the specimens were brought to me in a 
fragmentary condition by my next-door neighbor, and if any unfortu- 
nate creature did actually emerge anywhere within the city limits it 
lived so short a time as to be unnoticed. This is rather a curious fact, 
too, because the ordinary harvest fly (Cicada tibicen) occurs within 
the city limits in any number and does not seem to be in the least dis- 
turbed by the sparrows. 
In many places the melon lice were very destructive during the pres- 
ent season, and acres of vines were plowed up because of the injury 
caused by them. The appearace of these insects was expected by me, 
when the last week of June and the first days of July passed without 
a cold storm. For two years we have had, in New Jersey, either in the 
last days of June or the first days of July, very heavy storms, gener- 
ally accompanied by heavy winds and by cold rain, and as these 
occurred just at the time at which the aphides migrate from their win- 
ter and spring food plant, which I regret to say I have not yet been 
able to discover, they have been so much reduced in numbers that no 
injury was caused by them and only a few plants here and there became 
infested. During the present season there was no rain in the central 
and southern part of ^ew Jersey from the first days of June to the last 
days of July, and in some localities there has been only a trace of rain 
up to the present time. This was ideal weather for the aphides, and 
they took advantage of it. The presence of the insects gave me an 
opportunity of making some tests of bisulphide of carbon, first suggested 
for this purpose, as far as I am aware, by Prof. Garman. and from these 
experiments, of which I will speak more at length elsewhere, it appears 
that this material can be practically used in the field as against these 
insects early in the season. 
Sweet potatoes were much retarded by the dry weaiher and this pre- 
vented them from growing away from their ordinary insect pests, the 
Cassidse. They were so long in starting that in many cases the beetles 
and their larvae destroyed the entire shoots, and the ground was then 
so dry that it was simply impossible to set out new plants. Much dam- 
age was therefore done, which, although directly attributable to the 
insects, was yet indirectly chargeable to the dry weather: because with 
an ordinary amount of moisture the plants would have grown away 
from the insects. The most satisfactory method of dealing with these 
creatures, up to the present time, is to let chickens run in the fields, 
and many of the growers, nowadays, set their chicken coops in the 
5216— No. 2 10 
