113 



"Wasps in India. 



A tin trunk belonging to Mrs. Sidney Preston, wife of a gentleman in Her Majesty's 

 civil service, was packed with wearing apparel, etc., in Hoti Murdan, and brought 

 to Jbelum, Punjab, Iudia, in March, 1889. It was left in a veranda for two months 

 and opened in May. It contained, to the surprise of the owner, four large nests of 

 wasps, the ordinary Vespa of the district. A small hole was at last discovered near 

 the hinge, affording a possible clue to the entrance of the parent or parents. One of 

 the nests was so large as entirely to fill up a baby's hood. After getting rid of the 

 paper-like nests and the living wasps, which were numerous, the remainder of the 

 clothing in the box was found to be covered with dead wasps in quantities; in fact, 

 with several hundred of them. The contents of the box had been carefully cam- 

 phored and peppered when packed. —[A. O'D. Taylor, Newport, R. I. 



Injurious Insects in New Mexico. 



I have forwarded to you by same mail this day a square tin box containing inclosed 

 two small boxes. The larger square box contains a number of specimens of the bean 

 or frijole bug, also two small pupa? of the same insect, and further, a single specimen 

 of a bug said by the sender to prey on his grape-vines. Having no means of killing 

 the insects I forward them as I receh'ed them, most of them alive. In the small 

 round box you will find a few specimens of another bug resembling the first some- 

 what in its markings and general shape, but larger and evidently a different insect. 

 These are all dead, and were collected by myself personally on a plant of the Convol- 

 vulus or Iponiaea family, near Bernalillo, in the Rio Grande Valley. Not having a 

 Gray's Manual I am unable to give the plant its name in botany. It is named by the 

 Mexicans, calabaza (gourd) on account of its enormous root, which is supposed to re- 

 semble a large, warty species of native gourd. Its flowers, of a pale purple color, 

 resemble very large morning-glories. The plant, which is found in all New Mexico, 

 but especially in the sandy wastes which border the valley proper of the Rio Grande 

 River, is an upright bush with long, narrow leaves. The stems and leaves die out 

 every year, but the root is perennial, and must live many years, for it becomes very 

 hard and woody. The seeds resemble those of the morning-glory, but are much 

 larger. I have described this plant so particularly because the larger of the two 

 species of bugs, which is of a paler color and with fewer and less marked black dots 

 (the one in the small round box), is found in large quantities on the plant ; and the 

 Mexicans have an idea, whether correct or not (of this I am no judge because I am 

 not an entomologist), that the frijole chinch (the smaller bug in the square box), 

 which is the destructive bug that preys on the beans, originates from the other. 



The convolvulus bug appears early in the spring ; I gathered it on the plants my- 

 self in May. The Bean bug appears in July. Although I felt satisfied that the two 

 insects are different, and that a bug that preys on the Convolvulus family could not 

 equally prey on beans, I thought this matter of sufficient interest, and brought a 

 handful of convolvulus bugs, which I pub in the midst of a small patch of beans 

 growing in the garden, but within ten minutes they had all left, and for two weeks 

 I looked carefully through the beans, but neversaw a bug of any kind on them. The 

 Bean bug commits great depredations on bean fields, often destroying them entirely. 

 The only means the Mexicans have found to somewhat prevent its ravages is to plant 

 their beans late, about the middle of July, the bug appearing to swarm in smaller 

 numbers later in the season. The chief season of the Mexicau bean bug seems to be 

 from the middle of July to the first of September. The Phaseolus grown by the Mex- 

 icans belongs to the same family as our string beans ; the pod can be eaten as a string 

 bean, and the bean is of a yellowish brownish color, of ordinary size, somewhat dat- 

 ish. When cooked and prepared in the Mexican way it is the best bean I have ever 

 eaten, far superior and better flavored thau our so-called navy bean, and it would be 



