36 



INJUEIOUS IKSECTS 



proleg. In its form and general appearance it somewliat 

 resembles the larva of the Cucumber-beetle, but it is 

 much smaller. Its motion is slow, arching up the ab- 

 domen slightly, on paper or any smooth surface, in such 

 a position that its motions are necessarily awkward and 

 unnatural, because in a state of nature it never crawls 

 over the surface, but digs and burrows among the roots in 

 the ground. Its length is 0.35 of an inch, and breadth 

 0.06 of an inch. It feeds upon roots beneath the ground. 



**The pupa (fig. 25, c,) is naked, white, and transforms 

 in a little earthen cocoon, pressed and prepared by the 

 larva, in the ground near its feeding place. This period 

 is short. 



''Every gardener knows that these insects are very 

 injurious to young cabbages and turnips as soon as they 

 appear above the ground, by eating off the seed-leaves; he 

 also almost universally imagines that v/hen the second, or 

 tree-plant leaves appear, that the young plant is safe from 

 their depredations; then the stem is so hard that the 

 insect will not bite it, and the leaves grow out so rapidly 

 as not usually to be injured by them. But if we would 

 gain much true knowledge of what is going on around us, 

 even among these most simple and common things, we 

 must learn to observe more closely than most men do. 



'' The gardener sees his young cabbage plants growing 

 well for a time, but at length they become pale or 

 sickly, wither and die in some dry period that usually 

 occurs about that time, and attributes their death to the 

 dry weather; but if he will take the pains to examine the 

 roots of the plants, he will find them eaten away' by some 

 insect, and by searching closely about the roots will find 

 the larva, grub, worm, or whatever else he may choose to 

 call it; from this he can breed the Striped Turnip-beetle, 

 as I have often done. 



I have observed the depredations of these larvae for 

 ten years, and most of that time had a convincing 



