143 
THE COLORADO POTATO-BEETLE. 
By W. S. DALLAS, F.L.S. 
[PLATE CXXI.] 
I N ancient times men noted especially the injuries done to their 
property by their larger and more powerful enemies. It was 
the boar that came out of the wood to lay waste the vineyard,, 
and the wild beasts of the field that ruined the hopes of the 
husbandman. At the present day, in all civilised communities, 
the number of such destroyers is greatly limited; but on the 
other hand we are compelled to recognise a multitude of minute 
enemies, which make up for their smallness by their great 
abundance, and perhaps are all the more mischievous by reason 
of their individual insignificance. Among the foes of the agri- 
culturist which have come into notice of late years, the insect 
which has been called the “Colorado Potato-bug,” has not only 
attracted a good deal of attention in America, where it has 
inflicted serious injury on the potato crops, but has also raised 
considerable apprehensions on this side of the Atlantic ; circum- 
stances which may justify us in giving some account of its 
appearance and natural history. 
This beetle was discovered by Messrs. Say and Nuttall 
during an early American exploring expedition in what was then 
known as the “ Far West,” on the banks of the Upper Missouri, 
towards the foot of the Rocky Mountains. It was described by 
Say in the third volume of the “ Proceedings ” of the Academy of 
Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, published in 1824, under the 
name of Doryjphora 10-lineata. For many years afterwards 
nothing was known of it except that such a beetle did exist, its 
true home being among the Rocky Mountains, where it feeds 
upon a wild solanaceous plant ( Solanum rostrcitum , Dunal) 
peculiar to that region. But during all this time the advance 
of a civilised population was going on with astonishing rapidity 
in the direction of the Rocky Mountains, converting the vast 
region west of the Mississippi — which in 1824 was still a wilder- 
ness inhabited only by Indians and hunters — into a more or less. 
