Colorado potato beetle

“ Many beetles have habits similar to those of the animals named, and, like them, their pretense is overdone. When the Colorado beetle, or potato-bug, falls from the potato-vine on being approached, it nearly always comes to the ground with the feet up. ”

“ Both sexes incubate the eggs, and the male may sometimes be heard singing softly or in a full-throated manner while at his domestic duties. These birds eat many destructive insect pests, including the much-dreaded Colorado potato beetle. ”

“ Riley gives the results of his observations and inquiries during the past year on each of these different insects, and, as in all his previous reports, keeps steadily in view the great practical object of his research, namely, the discovery of the best and most effectual means of annihilating these enemies of agriculture. In Missouri the farmers now accept the presence of the Colorado beetle as the necessary concomitant of the culture of the potato; but they do not fear it as once they did, being provided with the means of keeping the pest in check. ”

“ The perfect beetle appears about ten to fourteen days after the pupa is formed, begins to pair in about seven days, and on the fourteenth day begins to deposit her eggs. There are three broods of this insect every year. Neither geese, ducks, turkeys, nor barn-yard fowl will touch the larva of the Colorado potato-bug when it is offered to them, and there are numerous authentic cases on record where persons who have scalded to death quantities of these larvæ, and inhaled the fumes of their bodies, have been taken seriously ill, and even been confined to their beds for many days in consequence. ”

“ Louis Academy of Science, exhibited a Colorado potato-beetle, which was so completely covered with a mite parasite that the point of a needle could not be placed on any part of the beetle's body without touching one of the parasites. He estimated the number of mites at 800, and they had killed the beetle. Aside from the toad and other reptiles, the crow, the rose-breasted grossbeak, and domestic fowls, among birds which prey on the Doryplura decenlineata, Prof. ”

“ Tachina, parasite of
Colorado Potato Beetle. But few, however, suspect how enormous are the losses to crops in this country entailed by the attacks of the injurious species. In Europe, the subject of applied entomology has always attracted a great deal of attention. Most sumptuous works, elegant quartos prepared by naturalists known the world over, and published at government expense, together with smaller treatises, have frequently appeared; while the subject is taught in the numerous agricultural colleges and schools, especially of Germany.
45. The Lace-winged Fly, Its Larva and Eggs. ”

“ They rarely injure large, fully matured plants, but are often very destructive to those recently planted, especially if set during the summer. You can not catch them; for, as your hand approaches a leaf on which they cluster, they scatter with a sudden bound, and are at once lost to view, so nearly do they resemble the color of the ground. Slight dustings of dry wood-ashes impede their feeding somewhat; but I think we must cope with this insect as we do with the Colorado or potato beetle. ”

“ In this way the plow prepares the place for the “seed,” and afterward covers it. When the potato plants are just coming through the ground, the surface may be stirred with the back of an ordinary harrow. This loosens up the soil and kills the young weeds. The further culture consists in frequently passing the cultivator between the rows to keep the surface soil open and free from weeds. The soil may be thrown toward the vines after they have attained considerable size.
The potato has met with some serious enemies. The worst pest of late years is the Colorado beetle. ”

“ The succession of creatures I have enumerated is the normal entomology of an average Pennsylvania summer. But there came a year, a horrible year, shortly before my last return to England, when the Colorado beetle (alias potato-bug) , having marched over the whole width of the continent, from the far West to the Atlantic sea-board, made its appearance in the neighborhood of Philadelphia. ”

“ As insects they sting, suck blood and sometimes kill the higher animals. But it is as grubs and caterpillars that they eat and injure millions of dollars worth of grains and fruits and garden crops every year.
Hessian Fly which causes great damage to wheat. Wheat has three insect enemies—the chinch bug, the Hessian fly and the wheat midge. When ground into flour the meal worm often hatches out and makes it unfit for use. On the potato plant is the Colorado beetle that eats the leaves, so they cannot make plant food. The cabbage head is burrowed into by the larva of the cabbage moth. ”

“ The original home of this insect was Colorado, It is known that it lived upon the mountains there over fifty years ago, and that it fed upon the Solanum rostratum, a species of wild-potato. When the white man began planting potato-patches on the Rocky Mountains, better food, and in larger quantities, caused the great increase of the insect, which immediately began spreading toward the East. ”

“ The stalk inhabited by the larva wilts and dies. The perfect beetle, like many other snout-beetles, must of course live through the winter, to reproduce its species the following spring. In Southern Pennsylvania, some years, nearly every stalk of extensive fields is infested by this insect, causing the premature decay of the vines, and giving them the appearance of having been scalded. In some districts of Illinois, the potato crop has, in some seasons, been utterly ruined by this snout-beetle, many vines having a dozen larvæ in them. This insect attacks no plant but the potato. ”

“ Beetles, especially in their larva stage of development are very voracious, and as most of their species live on fruits, leaves, and stems of plants, they are often destructive of crops, and even of forests. Millions of vigorous, valuable trees have been assailed, and stripped of their leaves fast as they appeared, or literally bored to death. All know the ravages of the potato beetle on our American tuber, that has to be assiduously defended to prevent the entire destruction of the crop. ”

“ Several cannibal and one parasitic insect are known to prey upon the larva of the Colorado potato-bug, and the eggs in vast numbers are eaten by several species of lady-birds and their larva.
GENERAL REMARKS ON INSECTS.
The time is not far distant when the American farmer will be obliged to put forth greater efforts to destroy noxious insects than he has hitherto. It is a well-known fact that noxious insects are increasing in a rapid rate throughout every part of our land. The country is becoming so "buggy" that eternal vigilance is the price of every thing produced from the soil. ”

“ In particular years it has been known, in conjunction with the rose-bug, (Macrodactylus subspinosus, Linn.,) to swarm upon every apple-tree in some orchards in Illinois, not only eating the foliage, but gnawing into the young apples.
This beetle does considerable damage to the potato crop, especially in the North-Western States. Like the other members of the (Lytta) family, it lives under ground while in the larva state, and is troublesome only when in the perfect or winged state.
The Black-Rat Blister-Beetle, (Lytta murina, Le Conte.) —This species (Fig. 8,) is entirely black. ”

“ FEW insects have done more serious injury, or attracted greater attention, than this, even in America, where insect depredations attain a magnitude scarcely dreamed of in this country. Feeding originally on the wild Solanumr ostratum in the Rocky Mountain regions of Colorado and other Territories, it fell upon the cultivated potato as soon as civilized man began to grow this esculent within its reach. ”

“ What can I do to them?” cried Natalie, horrified at seeing so many bugs.
“You must kill them or they’ll eat all the leaves which are the only sources of light and fresh air provided for the tiny tubers already forming under the surface of the ground. These Colorado beetles lay eggs on the underside of the leaves and these soon hatch out additional bugs so that very soon the entire field is infested with them. The time to get rid of them is when the potato plants are still very small, as these are,” explained Mrs. ”

“ The larva subsequently hatches out, and bores into the heart of the stalk, always proceeding downward toward the root. When full grown, it is a little more than one fourth of an inch in length, and is a soft, whitish, legless grub, with a scaly head. Hence it can always be readily distinguished from the larva of the stalk-borer, which has invariably sixteen legs, no matter how small it may be. Unlike this last insect, it becomes a pupa in the interior of the potato-stalk which it inhabits: and it comes out in the beetle state about the last of August or beginning of September. ”

“ The Colorado beetle is about half an inch long, roundish, and in form much like a lady-bug. It has a series of ten stripes on each wing-cover, being alternately brown and yellow. It is a very beautiful insect; but, alas! it is among the most formidable of those diminutive enemies of the industry of man, whose depredations, even in the brief history of our nation, has cost us, in money loss of crops, more by many times than the sum-total of all our wars. Already, in Maryland, the ravages of the new-comer are filling the farmers with dismay. ”

“ This insect, in common with our other blister-beetles, has the same properties as the imported Spanish fly, and any of them will raise just as good a blister as that does, and are equally poisonous when taken internally in large doses. Where the striped blister-beetle is numerous, it is a great pest and very destructive to the potato crop. It eats the leaves so full of holes that the plant finally dies from loss of sap and the want of sufficient leaves to elaborate its juices. In some places they are driven off the plants (with bushes) on a pile of hay or straw, and burned. ”

“ The banana, however, has very long resisted the inevitable tendency to degeneration in plants thus artificially and unhealthily propagated. Potatoes have only been in cultivation for a few hundred years; and yet the potato constitution has become so far enfeebled by the practice of growing from the tuber that the plants now fall an easy prey to potato fungus, Colorado beetles, and a thousand other persistent enemies. ”

“ An insect which has spread from the high table-lands of the Rocky Mountains across the Mississippi Valley to the Atlantic, and that flourishes alike in the Stales of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Connecticut, and in Maryland, Virginia, and Texas—in fact, wherever the potato succeeds—will not be likely to be discomfited in the potato-growing districts of Europe. Some few, again, have ridiculed the idea of the insect's passage to Europe in any state, arguing that it is an impossibility for any coleopterous insect to be thus transferred from one country to another. ”

“ While the beetle, especially in the non-growing season, will live for months without food, the larva would perish in a few days without fresh potato-tops, and would, I believe, starve to death in the midst of a barrel of potatoes, even if it could get there without being crushed; for, while it so voraciously devours the leaves, it will not touch the tubers. The eggs, which are quite soft and easily crushed, could, of course, only be carried over on the haulm or on the living plant ”

“ I am not much of a hand at telling what any one or anything wears, so you may find it hard to recognise this excellent beetle from my description; but if you find one that has a potato bug speared on its beak, you will know that it is the farmer's friend. When you find one, be good to it, and make it welcome. ”

“ The larva of the species distinguished as decemlineata feeds greedily on the potato, and having attracted notice in Colorado for its ravages among the crops of that esculent in the Territory, it moved eastward year by year, till in 1874 it had reached the Atlantic seaboard. ”

“ Concerning the Colorado beetle, Mr Riley, State Entomologist for Missouri, reports that the eastward progress of the insect 'was at the average rate of eighty-eight miles a year, and that it has now invaded nearly a million and a half square miles, or more than one-third the area of the United States. It does not thrive where the thermometer reaches one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and hence it may never extend its range very far south of the territory now occupied ”

“ Some English journals are discussing the question as to whether, with the more moist and cool climate of this country, the ten-line potato-beetle would thrive here even if imported. "There cannot be much doubt that it will rather enjoy the more temperate clime; for while it thrives best during comparatively dry seasons, both excessive heat and drought, as well as excessive wet, are prejudicial to it. It is argued by others that on the Continent of Europe our doryphora would not thrive if introduced ”

“ About a month after hatching the adult beetle appears. There are two or three broods a year, the last brood in the beetle state lying dormant in the ground during the winter. When warm weather arrives, the beetles come forth in great numbers and fall greedily on the young potato-plants. ”

“ Even the voracious and ubiquitous Colorado Beetle manifests no taste for this plant, although it has had abundant opportunity to test its edible qualities. To the credit of insects generally, be it said, they are not omnivorous. ”

“ Indeed this might be said to be the bug age, in contrast with the stone age and the iron age and the golden age which have passed before. There is every known and unknown sort{300} of insect on Long Island. The Colorado beetle paid his respects promptly, on his evolution, and has remained permanently; the borers bore our apple-trees; the curculio swarms in our plum-trees; moths and army-worms and tent-caterpillars and every other sort of creeping and stinging thing assist our labors and share our profits. ”