499 
State Agricultvhal Society. * 
Eegent’s Park; but in 1842 I never saw one on the spot, yet the 
beans around Sandgate in tbe same year were very much injured by 
them. He further states that, having once established themselves 
upon the bean-tops, they breed at a rate which would be incredible, 
if it were not well attested, often making the bean-stalks as black as 
soot. 1 hey exhaust the plants by sucking the sap, so that when they 
abound, it is in vain to calculate upon a good crop, if they be not 
speedily arrested. The remedy practiced by all good cultivators, we 
are told, is, to cut off the tops of the plants with a scythe or other 
sharp implement, on the very first appearance of the insects upon 
them. Mr. Curtis adds to this, that these severed tops should be 
gathered into a heap upon one side of the field, and burned, or should 
be buried in a pit and trampled upon, for if they are left in the field 
many of the insects will crawl from them and regain the living plants. 
Put it stiikes me that if the tops of the plants are merely cut off the 
favorite nesting places of the insects are destroyed, so that it will be 
unable to settle and thrive and multiply upon the plants in its cus¬ 
tomary manner. 
Seveial other plants of the same natural order, Leguminos.e, to 
which the bean pertains, are liable to be infested by this black aphis, 
namely, the tufted vetch and the dyer’s broom, already mentioned 
on a preceding page, the Spanish broom Spartium junceum, and the 
black bean Dolichos Catiang. On the Laburnum also, L. vulgare, 
large families of this insect occur, their punctures curling and distort¬ 
ing the leaves of this tree in a remarkable manner. 
In the order Polygonacf^e, the dock, as already stated, was the plant 
on which Linnaeus first observed this aphis, and from which it has 
thereby obtained its scientific name. It occurs on the Itumex acutus 
and other species, and will no doubt be met with on these plants in 
this country. It also infests the two common species of field sorrel 
in Europe, and I have seen the stalks of th <s,Bumex Acetosella, the 
common field sorrel or “ red top ” of this country covered with it. 
I suppose this to be also the aphis which sometimes invades our buek- 
" heat, Polygonum Fagopyrum Linn., Fagopyrum esculentum of 
our present botanists, completely covering particular stalks of this 
grain and so exhausting them of their juices that none of their ker¬ 
nels probably become filled. I have not been able to meet with this 
buckwheat aphis in my own vicinity, and only know it from speci¬ 
mens and statements received from correspondents. And the insects 
of this family are so soft and tender and so diminutive withal, that in 
i)ing the} lose their colors and become so shriveled and distorted 
