494 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
PUNCTULATED FLEA-BEETLE. ON CUCUMBERS. OTHER PLANTS. 
garden, with only three or four seedlings iu a hill, it is evident 
the young worms could nowhere find a sufficient amount of food 
to nourish them to maturity. Having consumed all the young 
plants iu ono hill, they will be unable to work their way through 
the ground to come at another hill, except it be by the merest 
chance, and will thus perish. 
When an onion bed is attacked by these maggots, the only 
effectual mode of saving it from ruin is to look the plants carefully 
over and uproot every wilted one, and destroy the worms the root 
contains ; since if they are not killed they continue at work, feed¬ 
ing upon one plant after another, until they are all or nearly all 
destroyed. 
Punctulated FLEA-BEETLE, Psylliodes punctulata, Melsh. (Coleoptera. 
Chrysomelidae.) 
On tho cuoumber, pio rhubarb, and other garden plants throughout the season, eating 
numerous small holes in tho loaves; a brassy blaolc and finely punotnred floa-beetlo with 
its shanks, feet and tho basal joints of its antonnai pale obscure yellowish. 
In addition to the Hairy flea-beetle which Dr. Harris mentions 
as infesting the cucumber, I find on these plants another species, 
closely similar, but on careful examination proving to be very dif¬ 
ferent from it, having the first joint of the hind feet more long 
and slender than is usual in this tribe of insects, and inserted for¬ 
ward of or above the lower end of the shank, it thus belonging 
to the genus which Latrcille has separated from Hallica under 
the name Psylliodes. This species is described by Dr. F. E. 
Melsheimer, in the third volume of Proceedings of the Academy 
of Natural Sciences, under tho name Psylliodes punctulata , or 
the Punctulated flea-beetle, in allusion particularly to the fore¬ 
body. the surface of which is covered with fine distinct punctures, 
as if made with the point of an exceedingly fine needle. But this 
character varies in different specimens, some having the surface so 
smooth, that these punctures become scarcely, if at all, perceptible. 
This is the common flea-beetle upon the cucumber leaves in tho 
eastern section of our State. I have also noticed it upon other 
plants in the garden. On radishes, one or moro are sometimes 
seen associated with tho Striped flea-beetle. The leaves of tho 
beet are sometimes noticed as having scattered boles perforated m 
them, which are usually the work of this insect. The pie rhubarb 
which is cultivated iu all our gardens for its thick, tender, juicy, 
acid leaf-stalks, as an early substitute for fruit in the making of 
