PRACTICAL PAPERS—COLORADO POTATO BUG. 331 
contrary, the dark stripes are accurately edged by a single 
regular row of punctures placed in a groove (5 tria ;) it is the 
second and third stripes—not the third and fourth—counting 
from the outside, that are united behind, the space between 
them being almost always brown ; and the leg is entirely pale, 
except a black spot on the middle of the front of the thigh. 
The spots on the thorax, in either of the above two species, 
are normally eighteen in number, arranged in the same very 
peculiar pattern which may be seen both in Fig. 44 d , d , and 
in Fig. 45 c; and precisely the same variations in this com¬ 
plicated pattern occur in either species. These are certainly 
very remarkable and suggestive facts. 
After t all these statements, it will not be wondered at that 
several otherwise well qualified observers have imagined that 
they had captured the true Colorado potato bug in Illinois 
long previously to the year 1864. Many such cases have been 
carefully investigated, and in every one of them it has turned 
out, upon examining the specimens, that the supposed true 
Colorado potato bugs simply belonged to the bogus species. 
Hence it is but reasonable to infer that in other cases, where it 
was not practicable to examine the specimens, the same very 
natural error had been inadvertently committed. 
HABITS OF THE COLORADO POTATO BUG. 
The Colorado potato bug, though it has acquired a prescript¬ 
ive title to the appellation of “bug,” is not, entomologically 
speaking, a bug (order Ilderoptera ,) but a beetle (order Coleop- 
tera.) It might, perhaps, be desirable, if it were possible, to 
get people to call it a “ potato beetle;” but as long as we all 
of us continue to talk every day of “shipping” goods by a 
railroad car, as well as by a ship, and as long as everybody, 
including the almanac-makers, writes about “sunrise” and 
“sunset,” while in reality it is the earth, and not the sun, that 
rises and sets every day, we must be content to smother our 
partiality for entomological purism, and talk with the vulgar, 
though we think with the wise. 
