67 
[ 327 ] 
lat section have suffered serious damage. That the Skunk 
lould eat Potato-bugs has no intrinsic improbability, and I think 
very one must be impressed with a feeling of the extreme ap- 
ropriateness of the diet. 
The testimony with respect to these insects being eaten by 
omestic fowls is contradictory. The truth seems to be that some 
sickens will eat them and others will not, or that they will eat 
lem under some circumstances, such as the pressure of extreme 
unger. My next door neighbor, Mr. Wurts, says he has taught 
is fowls to eat the bugs by throwing them down to them like so 
mch corn, when they were hungry ; and he thinks that if all 
hickens do not eat them it is because their education has been 
eglected. 
| 
The question will naturally be asked, why, with all these ene¬ 
mies, do the Potato-bugs continue to multiply, like the locusts of 
igypt ? The best answer I can give is, that no one of these 
iany enemies, if we except, perhaps, the parasitic Lydella, is ex- 
tusively appropriated to these insects, like the Tachina of the 
'ussock-moth or the Chalcis of the Bark-louse, mentioned in the 
arlier part of this report. In other words these various enemies 
epredate upon the Potato-bugs when they happen to come in 
iieir wav, but do not depend upon them for subsistence. Be- 
ides, the predaceous insects above enumerated do not belong to 
he prolific class, and therefore are too few in individuals to make 
mch headway againt such a multitudinous host as the Colora- 
o Potato bugs. I have repeatedly walked through potato fields 
warming with bugs, with the express intention of taking note of 
heir destroyers, without seeing any creature seriously deserving 
f the name. 
Nature, if left to her own resources, often exhibits wonderful 
urative and recuperative powers, which are ordinarily sufficient 
o preserve the balance between the world of insects and that of 
dants. If in any case, like the present, she seems to fail, it is 
iecause we have abruptly disturbed the balance by supplying 
liese prolific insects with a superabundance of congenial food, 
^nd now that we are overrun by them we stand aghast at the 
onsequences. But nature often accommodates her economy to 
iuman wants, and rectifies our errors and our follies. And I 
tave no doubt that the Colorado Potato beetle, like other nox- 
