52 
Methods of cmitrol. — When this leaf -miner occurs in kitchen gardens 
it is most easily controlled by gathering and destroying the leaves 
as soon as found infested, and neighboring plants which serve it for 
food should be treated in the same manner. In large fields of sugar 
beet much injury might be averted by proceeding in the same manner 
at the outset of attack. 
Insecticides have been suggested, but the habit of the maggot of 
feeding within the leaf at once indicates their uselessness. Kerosene 
emulsion has been tried without effect. Mr. Sirrine has observed that 
many gardeners and farmers on Long Island, where this insect is a 
spinach pest of importance, have practiced late fall and early spring- 
plowing, and are still troubled with it. But it is probable that clean 
culture is not also practiced, hence the insects have an opportunity to 
breed in weeds and return to cultivated plants. As the insect appears 
to prefer spinach to beets, it is possible that the former might be used 
as a trap crop in sugar-beet fields. 
PLANT-BUGS. 
The sugar beet furnishes sustenance for hordes of sucking insects, 
such as plant-bugs, plant-lice, leaf -hoppers, root-lice, and numerous 
related forms, but many of these insects live normally on wild plants, 
weeds, and grasses, on which their younger stages are passed, and 
prefer most other vegetable crops, when readily obtainable, to beets. 
Among the more common forms of these insects which obtain nour- 
ishment by suction are several species of true bugs of the family 
Capsid^, generally termed plant-bugs, although some forms are also 
known as leaf-bugs, chinch bugs, and by similar names indicative of 
their habits or appearance. The commonest and most injurious of 
these insects are two forms of false chinch bugs and the tarnished 
plant-bug and garden flea-hopper. 
THE TARNISHED PLANT-BUG. 
[Lifgus pratensis Linn.) 
As this is the commonest of all bugs. and. according to general ver- 
dict, one of the most troublesome, it may serve as an example of this 
class. It is at home practically everywhere in Xorth America, from 
Canada to Mexico, and attacks most plants whether cultivated or wild. 
It occurs in fields of sugar beet throughout the warm season, and fre- 
quently does damage to garden crops, both vegetable and fruit, and to 
trees grown in nurseries. 
The mature plant-bug is of the appearance shown in figure 51 at the 
left. The general color is a pale, obscure, grayish brown, marked with 
black and yellow, the thorax also with red. The pattern is variable, but 
more or less as illustrated. The legs are still paler brown or yellow- 
