64 
could be stamped out, may never occur again, or not for very 
many years. The season was an excellent one for the potato. 
The plants had a superabundance of foliage and the few beet- 
les could not possibly cause any injury to the crop. Conse- | 
quently most farmers did not try to kill them, thus giving the 
insect a chance to rapidly multiply. In the fall of 1895, pota- 
to-bugs could be found in many places and, no doubt, they will 
again be somewhat injurious in 1896. In other places, how- 
ever, they are still absent, and with proper pains can be kept 
away for years. Potato growers should recollect that by kill- 
ing one potato-beetle in spring, they notonly destroy the off- 
spring of that insect, but the offspring of the two following 
generations. Supposing the potate-beetle killed in spring hap- 
pened to be a female, able to lay five hundred eggs; the two 
hundred and fifty females of the second generation would pro- 
duce at the same rate 125,000 potato-bugs and these in the next 
generation 3,375,000. Ofcourse it is not likely that all of the 
offspring would reach maturity and be able to reproduce, still 
such figures show how rapidly an insect can increase in num- 
bers, and how important it is to nip the evil in the bud by kill- 
ing the members of the first generation. Besides this it is 
much easier to kill the few insects of the first brood than to 
kill the numerous ones of the later broods. As soon as the po- 
tato-plants appear above ground they are discovered by the 
hungry beetles which immediately set to work to feast and to 
deposit theireggs. Avery little Paris-green or London-purple 
applied at this time, and applied thoroughly and repeatedly, 
would kill most, if not all, of the potato-bugs in the field thus 
treated. The expenses, both for poison and labor are very much 
smaller than later in the season, and if every farmer would 
share in this work we could keep away the potato-beetle for 
many years, if not forever. Whatis necessary, however, is 
united effort, because one careless or slovenly farmer could 
breed enough potato beetles in his fields to infest all surround- 
ing farms. 
As has been mentioned already the beetles are active and fly 
about long before their food-plants are visible. It has been 
found that these beetles can be attracted to the tubers of the 
plants, and since the potatoes are socheap this year it would 
bevery easy to attract large numbers of these insects in the 
