SECOND EDITION 
The Pennsylvania State College 
Correspondence Courses in Nature Study 
QH 53 
. P5 
no. 7 
Copy 1 
LESSON NO. 7 
The Colorado Potato Beetle 
By George C. Butz 
T HERE is probably no insect that we could choose that 
would be a better subject for the study of insect life 
in all its manifestations: for, in this case, we have the 
four stages—egg, larva, pupa and imago—sharply defined. The 
potato beetle is a true beetle, and not a bug. The distinction 
to be made between the two is, that the beetle is a hard- 
shelled insect with chewing mouth-parts, while the true bug 
is an insect with sucking mouth-parts. Therefore, we should 
always say potato beetle and not potato bug. It is called the 
Colorado potato beetle, because it originally lived at the base 
of the Rocky mountains in Colorado, feeding upon a native 
species of solanum, the genus of plants to which the cultivated 
potato belongs. Having a pair of hard-shelled wings is an evi¬ 
dence of its being a member of the large order of insects known 
as the Coleoptera, which we may regard as including all the 
beetles. Professor Comstock tells us there are more than eleven 
thousand species of beetles known to occur in America north 
of Mexico. About 80,000 species are known to entomologists. 
It is interesting to observe the history of the spread of this 
insect from its original home in Colorado to the neighboring 
states, and by stages to the extreme eastern states. It was first 
brought to notice about the year 1856. In 1859, it was found 
in the potato fields of the settlers of Kansas. In 1861, it was 
Copyrighted 1900, by The Pennsylvania State College 
Collected set. 
