440 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
CUCUMBER-BEETLES. REMEDIES. AN EXPERIMENT. BOXES THE BEST PROTECTORS. 
their winter quarters, some of them continuing abroad into the month of 
October. 
On the subject of remedies, I may remark that these Cucumber-beetles 
being very shy and timorous, any new and unusual appearances about the 
cucumber hills may cause them to forsake them in some instances, when 
in others they will have no effect. Hence many of the remedies which 
have been proposed are of but slight efficacy and wholly unreliable, such 
as ducting the plants with ashes, snuff, plaster, &c. A few years since I 
noticed the following statement in one of our most respectable agricultural 
periodicals: “Charcoal a cure for the striped bug. It may be implicitly 
depended upon. Dust it on from a sieve or coal sifter. If the raius wash 
it off, put it on again. We have used soot with good effect, but recom¬ 
mend charcoal dust on the strength of the most reliable personal testimony. 
There is no humbug in it.” As I had just then discovered that my vines 
were invaded by the Cucumber-beetle, I resolved to test the efficacy of this 
substance, and some other remedies. The history of the experiments thus 
made are briefly stated in my notes, as follow's: 
“June 16th. I dust powdered charcoal thickly over a hill of cucumbers, 
a hill of squashes and a hill of citrons. Another hill of squashes I turn 
up the leaves and dust their undersides with all the charcoal powder their 
hairs will hold. 
I dust powdered soot thickly on another citron and a squash hill. 
I dust ashes on another hill of cucumbers, all that will adhere to the 
hairs on the under and upper surfaces of the leaves and on the stalks. 
I put a box (open at the bottom and top) around a cucumber hill and 
another around a squash hill — to observe which of these several measures 
is the most efficacious. Other hills are remaining without anything ap¬ 
plied to them. 
June 11th. On going to the patch of vines at noon, I find the beetles as 
numerous on the hills dusted with charcoal and with soot as on those not 
dusted. I notice one beetle crocked over as black as any son of Vulcan, 
and still wallowing and crowding around upon a leaf thickly covered with 
the charcoal dust. The hill on which I dusted the underside of the leaves 
appears to be no better protected thereby than the others. No beetles were 
on the hill dusted with ashes. One was found in one of the boxes. 
June 18th. The hills dusted with charcoal and with soot continue to 
have several beetles upon them, and two were on that dusted with ashes. 
The boxes certainly are the most efficacious, there being no beetles in them, 
while but for them there would have been a dozen no doubt, on each of 
these two hills.” 
For more than twenty years I have made use of boxes, finding them a 
most reliable protection against these beetles. And placed over the hills 
soon after they are planted, whereby no beetles can get to the young plants 
to drop their eggs around the roots, I am inclined to think will be one of 
the most efficacious methods of saving the roots from being attacked by 
the larvae. But our knowledge of these larvae is as yet too imperfect to 
enable us to speak with confidence respecting measures for combatting 
them. 
