6C0 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
ASPARAGUS BEETLE. NO INSECTS ON OUR ASPARAGUS BEFORE. 
About twenty-five species of these plants are known to botanists. They are 
found growing wild in the temperate and tropical regions of the eastern con¬ 
tinent, a moiety of them occurring in the neighborhood of the Cape of Good 
Hope, and the remainder along the shores of the Mediterranean and in the 
East Indies and Japan. 
Being thus numerous and widely distributed in the old world, it is rather 
remarkable that we have not any plant of this kind, found wild, upon the 
American continent. And consequently we have no insects here which feed 
upon vegetation of this nature. Therefore, when the garden asparagus was 
introduced here from Europe, it was able to grow without molestation from 
any insect depredator. 
There is no doubt that this vegetable was brought to this side of the Atlantic 
about the time of the first settlement of the country by Europeans. Although 
we are unable to refer to any record definitely informing us of the time when 
it was introduced, the fact is fully attested in the documents which have come 
down to us from that period, that the companies of early emigrants to our 
shores were unremitting in their efforts to introduce here all the moro valu¬ 
able plants with which they had been acquainted in their native, countries— 
bringing the seeds and roots with them on their emigration hither, or after¬ 
wards receiving them from their European friends as opportunities for their 
transmission presented. We are hereby sufficiently assured that a vegetable 
so esteemed and so easy of cultivation as is the asparagus, would find its way 
here immediately upon the first arrival of the settlers. And thus this plant 
has been growing upon this continent for upwards of two hundred years, 
wholly free from those insect enemies from which it has all along been suffer¬ 
ing in its native regions. It is now in universal cultivation with us. Every¬ 
where through the United States, north and south, there is not a garden of 
any pretensions, which has not its bed of asparagus, whilst in the vicinity of 
our largest cities, to supply the demands of their population, whole fields are 
occupied with it. And yet, although it is growing thus extensively, neither 
one of those insects which depredate upon it in Europe has ever been found 
in this country, ncr do any of our American insects attack it. Thus it has 
been our happy lot to grow this one valuable plant, wholly free from the 
annoyance of seeing it marred and mutilated by those insect foes which give 
us so much vexation and trouble with almost every other kind of vegetation 
which we attempt to cultivate. 
Alas that our condition, which has been so felicitous in this particular, is 
now about to terminate—that the worst enemy to this culinary herb has at 
length found its way to our shores, with every probability that it will multiply 
and extend itself over our country, to remain as another evil entailed upon 
our land through all coming time 1 
It was in June last that a box came to my hands from the President of the 
Queens County Agricultural Society, Daniel K. Young, Esq., of Matinneoock, 
containing an insect and its larva, which in an accompanying letter was stated 
to have newly appeared there upon the asparagus, greatly injuring and threat¬ 
ening to totally ruin this valuable Long Island crop. This insect I at once 
saw was the noted Asparagus Beetle, so long known and so often complained 
