STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
499 
STRIPED FLEA-BEETLE. ITS DESTRUCTIVENESS ON CABBAOES. 
body are obsolete, as arc also the black bands on the sutures of 
the hind body. 
This Cabbage-fly is so closely related to the Onion-fly that the 
same remarks made respecting the remedies for that species will 
apply equally well to this. In the Country Gentleman , May 14, 
1857 (vol. ix, p. 319), E. Sanders reports that one of the Albany 
gardeners had saved his plants from the general ruin of the pre¬ 
ceding year, by sifting powdered tobacco upon them—so much 
ouly as to lay a flue dust upon the leaves, and repeating the appli¬ 
cation if the dust is scattered off by a high wind or by rain. It 
is confidently stated that the fly will not alight upon the dusted 
plants to deposit its eggs. If this is an effectual remedy, it will 
no doubt be equally effectual against the radish fly and other flies 
of this genus. 
Striped flea-beetle, Haltica (Phyllotrela ) striolata, Illiger. (Coleoptera. 
Chrysomelidae.) 
Gnawing numberless little pits in tho loavos of tho cabbage, turnip and radish, and per¬ 
forating with holes the thin leaves of tho mustard and othor cruciferous plants; a small, 
black, shining flea-beetle with a broad wavy palo dull yellow 6tripo upon each wing-eover. 
The Striped flea-beetle is one of the most common insects in the 
garden through the.whole season, attacking all the numerous gar¬ 
den plants and flowers which pertain to the natural order Cruci- 
ferce, and when these plants are young and tender, wholly destroy¬ 
ing them if neglected. Thus the injury sometimes occasioned by 
it is quite serious. In the market gardens around Albany I am 
told that some years whole beds of cabbage plants are destroyed 
by it, sometimes within the space of twenty-four hours, so sud¬ 
denly is it liable to invade the beds in immense numbers. Mr. 
Lawrence, a former member of the State legislature, informed me 
that this flea-beetle had been very destructive in the year 1856, in 
all the gardens around New York ; he had planted six acres to 
cabbages in his own grounds at Flushing, and to such an extent 
were the plants wounded and killed by these insects that he finally 
cultivated but one acre, and only accomplished this by repeatedly 
setting new plants wherever those disappeared which had been 
set previously. And the last of June, after the plants are grown 
so large as to survive their depredations, the beetles cluster upon 
particular leaves, those usually which are next inside of the large, 
tough outer ones, and feed upon their margins, commencing near 
the base and working along to the apex, eating the upper surface 
