REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST 



449 



if slices of potatoes or of other vegetables of which they are known to 

 be fond, were placed beneath them to serve as baits. 



Curtis in his Farm Insects, page 207, among other remedies, recom- 

 mends strewing old cabbage leaves over a field, in the same way as 

 when slugs are troublesome, and employing children to turn them over 

 and collect the millepeds secreted beneath. 



Miss Ormerod states that a species of Jalas, J. guttatus, has a 

 special fondness for mangolds, and where slices had been placed for bait, 

 she had seen them swarming, when removed, with the millepeds 

 crawling over them in all directions. Cotton-cake had also been found 

 to attract them from special crops. "A strong solution of common 

 salt or of nitrate of soda rapidly killed the spotted millepede." 



Mites Attacking Mushrooms. 



(Class Aba.ciinida: Ord. Acarina.: Fam. ?Trombididje.) 

 A mushroom-grower, writing from Newburgh, N. Y., who has three 

 thousand square feet of mushroom beds in cellars, asks for a remedy 

 for " the millions of small, reddish crawling lice which attack each ' pin 

 head ' as soon as it shows through the soil." 



Prolificacy of Mites. 



No examples were sent, but with hardly a doubt the little reddish 

 creatures were mites, belonging to the Order of Acarina, as no other 

 living forms (unless Anguillulidce) would occur "in millions" in 

 connection with mushrooms, except the minute and rapidly multiply- 

 ing acarids. Thus, in an instance recorded by Murray — in a barn on 

 the Imperial farm at Vincennes, where Australian potatoes had been 

 stored, such an immense number of mites had been developed in less 

 than eight days that the soil of the ground was completely covered 

 with a bed of the Tyroglyphus, looking like an animate 1 dust, of a 

 gray color, and composed of myriads of millions of these little 

 animals. 



An European Mushroom Mite. 

 It would be of interest to know the particular species that has 

 attacked the pin-head mushrooms of the above inquiry, as it might aid 

 in prescribing the proper remedy. In Europe, Rhizoglyphus rostro- 

 serratus is very destructive to the cultivated mushrooms, particularly 

 to the common Agaricus campestris grown in the vicinity of Paris, 

 but this is described as of a feeble, gray, rusty color; it produces, or is 

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