484 



ful experiment has been made for ns by Mr. William R. Wood, florist 

 and gardener, of this city. A small lawn, 20 by 30 feet, on Connecticut 

 avenue, was badly infested by white grubs, probably the larv?e of Al- 

 lorhina nitida, and Mr. Wood, on examination, found that they were 

 present at the rate of 20 or 30 to the square foot, while the grass was 

 nearly dead. Last September he sunk a number of the capsules of a 

 capacity of 5 grams to a depth of 6 inches and at a distance of 3 feet 

 apart, with the result that this spring the grass came up as green as 

 ever and a careful examination showed no grubs at all. The exemption 

 the present spring is without doubt due to the effects of the remedy, 

 and not to the fact that the bugs when transformed to beetles had left 

 the ground, for the reason that the soil last fall contained many half- 

 grown larvae. The capsules of this size cost 17 francs per thousand. 

 They are made of a kind of gelatine, which dissolves by the action of 

 moisture, liberating the bisulphide gradually. If they could be made 

 cheap enough in this country they would prove good vehicles for the 

 application of this insecticide to crops of special value, like the grape, 

 and to valuable apple trees affected by the Eoot Louse, and also, as in 

 the instance given above^ to small lawns about city houses, although in 

 such cases kerosene emulsion, applied in the manner described in vol. 

 I, No. 2 of Insect Life, will be equally efficacious and at the same 

 time cheaper and easier. 



MORE DAMAGE TO CORN BY THE BRASSY FLEA-BEETLE. 



Mr. G. M. Dodge, of Louisiana, Missouri, contributes a note to Gole- 

 man's Rural ^Yorldof May 28, 1891, stating that ChcEtocnema pulicaria 

 (mentioned as Haltica pimctulata) has appeared in immense numbers 

 upon young corn. The beetle eats away the pulp of the leaf, which 

 then dries up. The fields of corn look as if touched by frost. Holes 

 are even eaten through the leaf and frequently leaves are cut off. 



PHYTOPHAGIC DUNG BEETLES. 



In a recent paper * Mr. Arthur E. Shipley refers to the ravages of 

 Lethrus cephalotes to vineyards in southeastern Europe. This is a large 

 black Scarabaiid beetle, allied to the genus Geotrypes, and which has 

 the pernicious habit of cutting off the young and succulent shoots of 

 the vine, dragging them backwards towards their holes in the ground, 

 in which the beetles live in pairs. The shoots are left to dry in the sun 

 for a short time and are then carried into the holes, but whether they 

 serve as food for the beetles or their larvse has not yet been ascertained. 

 The genus Lethrus belongs to the laparostict Scarabseidae, also known 

 as coprophagous ScarabteidoB, and is the only species of this subfamily 

 known to injure cultivated plants. This subfamily is well represented 



* On Lethrus cephalotes, RhyncMtes beiuleti, and Chcetocnema basalis, three species of 

 destructive beetles (Proc. Cambridge Philos. Sop., v. 6, pt. vi, pp. 335-340.) 



