374 
Tlie Colorado Potato-Beetle. 
wherever it goes, and it has fallen upon the black henbane 
(^Hyoscyamus niger\ the cabbage, and even grasses. Worst of all, 
it appears to have acquired a taste for the potato-tuber itself. 
A correspondent of Mr. Maclachlan, the Treasurer of the Ento- 
mological Society of London, writing a few months ago from 
Pueblo, in Colorado, says that he found on opening his potato- 
pits last winter several tubers wholly or partially destroyed by 
the beetles, and that he detected them in the act. The habit 
of eating tubers or fruit, or any other part of a plant except 
the leaves, is entirely unknown in any other species of the 
family to which this voracious creature belongs. 
Although it may be taken as highly improbable that the pest 
Avill ever make a permanent home in the potato-fields of Britain, 
it is possible that a few stray specimens may arrive. But the 
details given above of its habits and transformations will show 
how unlikely this is to occur without speedy detection. It is 
not likely to be conveyed in the egg-state, as the eggs are not 
concealed, but laid on the outside of the leaves, and are quickly 
hatched ; neither can the pulpy larva>, which take only seventeen 
days to complete their growth, and cannot live two days without 
a continuous supply of fresh leaves, be carried so far ; nor the 
fragile pupa, which changes to the perfect insect in ten days. 
Dr. Fitch, State Entomologist of New York, who often received 
parcels of the living insect from the Western States, found 
always the earlier states dead or crushed, whilst the adult beetles 
bore the journey perfectly well. It is only the arrival of the 
perfect beetle, then, that may be considered possible. This 
might happen at any time during the summer, through the 
medium of any vessel arriving from American ports where the 
insects are flying about. Mr. Riley put this very clearly when 
he said, in one of his earlier Reports, that wluenever the streets 
of New York in summer should swarm with the beetles as 
those of St. Louis had done, it would be exceedingly likely that 
some of them, pregnant females included, would^ alight on 
outward-bound vessels in the port, and get conveyed to Europe. 
Mr. Riley himself now brings us the news that this summer the 
beetles are swarming in the shipping quarter of New York. If 
a few should get concealed among the cargo, especially in the 
early autumn, when they begin to look out for a snug place 
wlierein to lie dormant, the probability of their safe conveyance 
will be increased. We are assured, indeed, by Professor Lawson 
of Nova Scotia, that for the past two or three years it has been 
impossible in many ports of North America to pack up any kind 
of produce without potato-beetles getting into it, and that he 
Icnows for a fact that numbers have been so sent to England. 
The possibility of living specimens arriving here cannot, there- 
fore, be disputed ; but I hold that the facts and analogies of the 
