THE LEAP BEETLES* 



1158 



IMiil. Acad. Nat 



2136 (G789). Lepttnotarsa decemmneata Say, Journ 

 Bel, III, 1824, 453; ibid. II, 218. 

 Oval, robust, convex. Dull yellow; thorax 

 with two short, divergent lines on disk and six 

 small spots each side, black ; elytra with suture 

 and five narrow lines on each side, black, the 

 second and third united near apex ; knees and 

 tarsi blackish. Length 5.5-11 mm. (Fig. 497.) 



The original home of this well-known 

 beetle was Colorado, Say having described 

 it from the Upper Missouri River, where it 

 fed upon the sand nettle, E,oianum rostra- 

 turn DunaL It mn.de its way gradually 

 eastward, migrating f r0 m one potato patch 

 to another, aided, doubtless, by railways 

 and commerce, until it has spread over the 



whole of the eastern United States. It first Kg- *w. a, adult beetle; b, hind 

 appeared in numbers in Indiana about f^t^U ; f IS 

 1868, and the first beetles ever collected by (After bharp:) 

 the writer were these "new-fashioned" or "Colorado potato bugs," 

 an old tin basin and a stout stick being the paraphernalia used. 

 Suffice it to say they were not taken for a collection, but at a fixed 

 sum per hundred, paid to the children to clear the patch of the 

 pests. Afterwards the discovery that a solution of Paris green 

 "would fix 'em" put the tin basin method of collection out of vogue. 



For a number of years the potato industry in the State was al- 

 most destroyed by this beetle, but its damages gradually lessened, 

 until now they appear much fewer in numbers than between the 

 years 1870 and 1890, and are readily kept in check by Paris green 

 and other arsenites. The beetle hibernates in the ground, both as 

 pupa and imago, and begins to mate about May first, each female 

 producing 750 to 1,000 eggs, these being laid at intervals through 

 forty days. Under normal conditions it requires but about 36 days 

 from the laying of the eggs to the perfecting of the imago, and in 

 about 14 days after emerging, the beetle begins to lay a second gen- 

 eration of eggs. The first or spring brood becomes fertile, there- 

 fore, about July 1st, and the second generation by September 1st, 

 It attacks not only potatoes, but egg plant and other members of 

 the Solanacea? or potato family. The rose-breasted grosbeak, yel- 

 low-billed cuckoo or rain-crow, and the quail feed upon the larval of 

 the beetle, as do also turkeys and occasionally chickens. 



