STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
439 
CUCUMBER-BEETLE. IT DESTROYS THE YOUNG PLANTS. 
cucurbitaceous plants sprouting from the ground until two or three weeks 
after this time, it is obvious they are able to subsist on some other vegeta¬ 
tion when they cannot obtain their favorite food. I first meet with them 
each year upon bushes of different kinds along the borders of fields and 
meadows, in which situations they continue to be found during the whole 
season. They are particularly common in May on the different species of 
thorn (Cralcegus), from whence I have thought that the flowers and leaves 
of these shrubs very probably furnish them with a portion of their suste¬ 
nance at this early part of the season. 
So soon as the cucumber and its kindred plants begin to-push themselves 
up out of the ground in our gardens, these beetles commence gathering 
around them, hiding themselves from our sight in the cracks in the dried 
surface of the ground, which the plants make as they force themselves out 
of the soil, and there lurking unsuspected, dropping their eggs around the 
plants and feeding upon the tender young stalks and the seed leaves. I 
find in my notes the following memorandum under the date of May 29th: 
“For several days I have noticed my young cucumbers and squashes were 
drooping and badly gnawed. The only insects I could see around them 
were numberless garden fleas ( Podura) and a few flea beetles ( Haltica ), 
and it was a query in my thoughts whether these were causing the injury. 
All the plants have disappeared from several of the hills. Early this moriv 
ing I went to all the hills without discovering any enemy that I thought 
could occasion their sorry condition. A hill having two dozen plants, some 
just out of the ground and others bursting from the seeds, has every plant 
drooping and many of them so badly wounded they cannot recover. While 
looking at their sad plight, I happened to notice a yellow striped beetle 
crawling out of a crack in the ground. He was instantly killed, and in 
disturbing the dirt in killing him two other beetles crawled up into sight. 
And now upon carefully examining, I found upwards of fifty of these beetles 
lurking there, just under the baked crust of the surface, wholly hid from 
view, nibbling and glutting themselves with the young tender leaves just 
beginning to push up from the seeds into daylight. I made out to pinch 
and kill every one of the villains, just as they were awaking apparently 
from their night’s slumber. And now on opening the cracks in the ground 
at the other hills, I found from half a dozen to a dozen of these beetles at 
each of them. They evidently prefer the youngest, tenderest plants, to 
those which are more advanced.” 
As is well known, these beetles continue to infest the plants during the 
whole season; but after the stalks begin to shoot out into running 
vines, they are ^o robust and vigorous as to withstand the wounds they 
continue to receive from these insects. The texture of the plants has now 
become so firm and woody that the beetles only relish their most tender 
and succulent parts, such as the flowers and the leaves, particularly any 
leaves which are sickly and drooping. 
In autumn these Cucumber-beetles are quite common upon the flowers 
ot the golden rod, to which they are probably attracted to feed upon their 
pollen and petals. They are among the last insects which withdraw into 
