STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
669 
garden flea, its name, its appearance and motions, its body. 
come near the genus Myrmecophila (Order Orthoptera, Family Achetidas) 
■which was unknown to me at this time; and since then these minute insects 
have escaped my observation. They were very different from the little 
flea-beetles, Hallica jmbescenn, also found on cucumber vines.*’ 
This is a wingless insect, most nearly related to the Lepisma or Spring- 
tail, and like it skipping by means of a forked tail which is held against the 
under side of the body. It thus pertains to the Apterous order of insects, 
and to the family Podcridje, which, with the Lepisma constitutes the group 
or sub-order named Thysaxocha. This group is arranged in scientific works 
next to that which embraces the flea ( Pulex ); and this name, flea, is fre¬ 
quently given to the species of the family Poduridte also, and appears to 
be the most appropriate term which our language furnishes by which to 
designate these insects. By some of the gardeners around Albany I have 
heard the species now under consideration called the “ Little sand flea,” its 
size being so similar to that of a particle of sand. But as this name will be 
apt to give the erroneous idea that the insect abounds in sandy soils more 
than elsewhere, I regard the name Garden Flea as its most suitable designa¬ 
tion; and it has for a long time been entered in my manuscripts under the 
corresponding technical name Symnthurus horlensis. 
This insect is abundant in our gardens when we first commence work in 
them in the spring, though it is not till the young plants have come up 
from their seeds and the first weeding among them takes place that it usu¬ 
ally attracts our observation. Numbers of them are then noticed to be stand¬ 
ing in the warm sunshine, upon every leaf, every pebble and fragment of a 
dry weed which projects above the surface of the ground. Some of them 
are seen to be moving about, but with feet so minute that they are invisi¬ 
ble. And if the finger is approached towards those which are standing 
upon a particular leaf, one after another deliberately throws itself with a 
sudden skip to the ground, till all have disappeared. They, however, are 
not shy and timorous, but gentle and disposed to be familiar; for, as they 
are everywhere skipping about in the dirt, if the hand happens to rest upon 
the ground a few moments, one or more of them is observed to have alighted 
upon it, and continues to stand thereon as if without any alarm or con¬ 
sciousness of danger. And thus they continue in the garden till in the 
latter part of June they become much less numerous and gradually cease 
to be noticed. As we look at them when they are standing in the strong 
sunlight, all that the eye. is able to discern of them, is, that they are ex¬ 
tremely small dull black objects, scarcely half the size of a mustard seed, 
that “ smallest of all seeds,” and that they have an egg-shaped form, 
moving with their smaller end in advance. Some of them it is noticed are 
smaller than the others, and the smallest ones are perceived to be of a paler 
or dull brown color. 
When looked at through a magnifying glass, we first notice a remark¬ 
able difference in the structure of this Garden Flea from that of insects 
generally, it being composed of only two principal parts, a head and a 
body, this latter being formed of the thorax and abdomen consolidated 
together into a single piece the same as in the higher classes of animals, 
