STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
505 
STRIPED PLEA-BEETLE. WINTER QUARTERS. DESTROYS SPROUTING SEEDS. 
aud are less on the alert, and leap with much less quickness and 
force. They also fly with facility in the warm, clear sunshine. 
These beetles arc not limited to the garden, but occur every¬ 
where in the meadows and pastures. They live through the win¬ 
ter in a torpid state, and may be found under the loose bark of 
trees as well as among the fallen leaves, in the cracks of old tim¬ 
ber, in the hollow stalks of straw and stubble, and all similarly 
sheltered situations. Inactive as they are during the inclement 
months of winter, the warmth of the hand is sufficient to revive 
them in a few minutes, and an uuusually mild day occurring at any 
time in the winter will allure many of them out from their retreats. 
On the first fine weather of spring, warmed by the genial heat 
of the sun and cheered by his rays, these flea-beetles arouse from 
their slumbers and come forth from their winter-quarters, leaving 
them for sunny situations, where they may be seen in considerable 
numbers, sitting on the sides of buildings and fences, or sunning 
themselves on dry banks and on projecting clods of earth, pro¬ 
tected from the cold wind. In the gardens some of them may be 
seen abroad some years in March, and in April they begin to appear 
on the crops in the fields ; but May and June are the months in 
which their most general and fatal attacks are made, -when the 
vegetation is young aud tender, and easily killed. Even before 
the sprouted seeds shoot out from the ground, I have reason to 
think the plants arc frequently destroyed by these flea-beetles 
feeding upon them in concealment under the surface. It often 
happens to the cabbage that not a plant makes its appearance in 
the bed where the seed has been sowed, in which cases the seed 
is commonly inferred to have been -worthless, but in most of these 
instances it is more probable that the young plants iu their way 
out from the ground have been consumed by these flca-bectles. 
Aud, as I have already published in No. 23 of my series of ento¬ 
mological articles in the Country Gentleman and in the Cultivator , 
I860, page 270, a correspondent at Solsville, Madison Co., N. Y., 
sent me this Striped flea-beetle with the statement that they early 
in June were “ committing great depredations upon the bean crop. 
They eat mostly under ground. After the beans are well sprouted 
and within half an inch of the surface of the ground, they bore 
minute holes on the inner side of each half of the bean, and it is, 
of course, stunted, and soon turns black. They sometimes attack 
tlie stalk below the beau, also, and follow it down an inch or 
