434 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
CUCUMBER-BEETLE. VINES KILLED BY WORMS IN THE ROOT. 
our seedsmen are censured for the bad quality of some of their seeds 
when the particular kinds complained of have been perfectly good, but 
have failed to grow from some hidden and unsuspected cause—underground 
insects being one of these causes of failure, and a much more common one 
than is usually supposed—they, like the “ worm i’ the bud,” nipping the 
tender growing point of the seed as soon as its germination commences 
hereby totally destroying it. 
In other instances we notice our vines to be coming up nicely from the 
ground. Being thus measurably relieved from our solicitude respecting 
them, it may be we for a few days omit to visit them, tfhen, on going to 
them, we are surprised to find that every plant has strangely disappeared 
from particular hills if not from the entire plantation, and the ground is as 
bare as when we first covered the seeds with the hoe. We thereupon 
hasten to replant all the vacant hills, little suspecting we are hereby pro¬ 
viding the same enemy who occasioned the destruction in the first instance 
with another instalment of food, to favor him in growing up to maturity. 
This second planting most probably shares the same fate with the first, if 
the seed is even permitted to sprout from the ground. And on coming 
thus to learn that some hidden enemy is probably lurking about that par¬ 
ticular spot, we abandon it and plant elsewhere, and thus succeed in obtain¬ 
ing a late crop. 
Finally, when our vines have escaped these calamities to which they are 
first liable, and are growing thriftily and arc beginning to bear their fruit, 
a particular plant is discovered to have the leaves drooping and wilted 
through the whole length of the vine and its branches, and in a day or two 
after, it is all dried up, faded and dead. Ere long an¬ 
other vine in the same hill follows it, and perhaps 
another. I knew an instance some years ago in • 
which all the vines in a garden withered and died one 
after another in this way, in a short time. On exam¬ 
ining a vine which is thus drooping, no wound or 
other injury is anywhere visible upon the stalks or the 
leaves, and we therefore become assured the malady 
must be seated in the root, and on coming to inspect 
this part we immediately discover the cause of the 
disaster. The root is found to be irregularly eaten in 
spots and pierced with small holes, and its central 
pith is more or less consumed and spongy, with one 
or more worms, the authors of the mischief, lurking 
within it. . 
The accompanying figure represents a root of the 
cucumber or melon of the natural size and structure. 
In these plants a thick, succulent, cylindrical root 
as bored by ex t fir 'ds straight downwards an inch or two into the 
Cucumber root i 
larvas of the Cucumber- ground, when it becomes abruptly narrowed into a 
slender tapering rootlet of a more firm and leathery 
texture, the small fibrous rootlets being given off laterally from this tapered 
