668 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
GARDEN FI.EA. MOST ABUNDANT, BUT HITHERTO NEVER NOTICED. 
scattered around, to attract the fowls to it. It was interesting to observe 
their gradual approach in eating the corn, until one of their number happened 
to perceive these insects. Instantly thereupon she hurried to picking them 
up, and in a moment, the whole flock, abandoning the corn, was crowded to 
this spot, each on the alert to obtain a portion of the dainty fare. It amply 
demonstrated how highly they relished these insects. 
Although fowls are prone to pick and injure cabbages, cucumbers, and 
several other garden vegetables, experienced cultivators of the asparagus 
assure nie they never molest this plant. We are therefore to look to them, I 
think, as being our best protectors against these insects. At the conversa¬ 
tional meeting of the Queens County Agricultural Society above alluded to, 
two instances were related, in which a portion of a bed to which chickens had 
had free access, had not been injured. If a flock of fowls is placed in an 
asparagus plantation, they will probably range over the grounds, continuing 
to forage upon these insects so long as one of them can be found. There is 
the fairest prospect, therefore, that they will prove to be a most eflicacious 
protection, and that by them our Long Island market gardeners will be able 
to rescue their valuable asparagus crops from the ruin with which they are at 
present threatened. 
2. Garden Flea, Symnthurvs hortensie, new species. (Aptera. Poduridie ) 
Superabundant in gardens in May and June, upon the leaves of young cabbage, turnip, cucum¬ 
ber, and various other plants, and also on the ground, soft black wingless insects smaller than 
grains of gunpowder, and skipping with agility. 
It is fifteen years since, that in an article on “ Winter Insects” in Dr. 
Emmons’s Quarterly Journal of Agriculture and Science, I named and de¬ 
scribed the Snow Flea, Podura nivicola, a minute insect which appears like 
grains of gunpowder sprinkled over the surface of the snow upon warm 
days in the winter and the opening of spring. An insect closely related to 
this appears every year in our gardens during the fore part of the season’ 
so numerous that it attracts the observation of every one at work therein, 
and is universally regarded as injurious. No account of it, however, is to 
be met with in any of our popular treatises upon gardening. I have 
always supposed it to be this insect, of which Dr. Harris speaks from 
memory, in the following paragraph in the First Edition of his Treatise, 
page 125, but which is omitted in the subsequent edition—and if so, this 
is the only published allusion to this insect, which, to my knowledge, has 
ever yet appeared in our country. 
‘‘Several years ago I observed that cucumber vines were much infested 
by some minute jumping insects, rather less than one-tenth of an inch 
long, of a broad oval shape, and black color, without wing-covers, but fur¬ 
nished with short thick hinder thighs. They injured the vines very much 
by eating holes into or puncturing the leaves, and were expelled by dust¬ 
ing the plants with flour of sulphur. These cucumber-skippers were so 
Boft and tender* and withal so agile, that it was difficult to catch without 
crushing them. Consequently I was unable to examine them thoroughly, 
and failed to preserve specimens of them. It is possible that they may 
