Year: 1878

An Interesting Sketch of the Pest.

 Just within sight of my veranda in

 the garden family named Dos:yohora, from the West. have located themselves,

 have prospered and increased so rapidly

 that it is very doubtful whether we shall be able to support them until the end of the summer. In fact, it is serious question whether they or we abandon the place. If they stay we shall have little or nothing to eat, and shall have to bring our supplies from. 8 distance.

 This family emigrated here two years ago from the Rocky mountains, and, in spite of all the Encouragement they have received, have stald ever since. (To confess the truth, I induced..my gardener to put arsenic into their food, but with little or no result.) They have most vo- racious capacities, und have 8 good many mouths among them to be fed. They make no noise, but seem to devote them selves entirely to satisfying their appe- tites. With this exception they are en- tirely inoffensive, attending exclusively to their own business but we cannot possibly afford to keep them any longer, and I intend to ccntrive some effectual method to induce them to go elsewhere and live. The way they happened te migrate to our part of the country was this: Their home was in the Rocky noun! tains, where the family has resided for many years; and if it had not been for the discovery of gold in those regions, and the rush of miners to the gold fields, they would have remainsd in the moun- tains where their ancestors were born, and would never have come East at all. They were poor out there. .oi The family was comparatively small, having few re- lations and no friends In fact, the food they lived on in ! the mountains was scarce, and only suficed for @ few of them. It was uncultivated, and they had to gather it in it's wild state, in which condition 1t was not very nourishing. Their principal food was what is known as soloaeune-a kind of wild potato, not very abundant nor nutritious. Under such circumstances it may readily be supposed that the family did not increase very rapidly in the Vest But after the gold-seekers began to move in that direc- tion in such numbers, a stage route was established, and SUI bsequently 8 railroad was built across the plains, where for five hundred miles there was little or no vegetation, and nothing whatever for a traveller to eat except what he took with him. As soon as the miners began to cultivate the ground in order to provide themselves with food, this poverty stricken family found an opportunity to get something more to eat, and as the land began to be cultivated at the sta- tions along the route, this family, forti- fled by the additional food with which they had been furnished by the miners, seemed to have made up their minds to come to the East, taking passage in the railway trains, where, on account of their utterly insignificant appearance, no one seems to have noticed them as they were taking their free ride toward the Atlantic. Some of them, since coming here, have actually taken the steamer for Europe, where their arrival has caused the utmost consternation, giving occasion to special edicts to be issued for their instant arrest and execution.

 In short, the Colorado beetle (Dopy- phoro), or potato-bug, has become the scourge of one continent and terror of another. The Goths and Vandals in their fierce onslaught on the Southern nations were not more greatly feared. The great power for evil which it posses ses is due to it's enormous capacity for propagation. As we descend the scale of animal life, this capacity rapidly in creases, and in the minute microscopic forms it reaches incredible proportions. The female of the Colorado beetle will lay over hundred eggs at one sitting. I have counted 121 in one nest. Under a magnifer they bear the form and ap- pearance of hens eggs. being translucent and of deep saffron color. Invariably deposited on the under side of the leaf, the eggs are matched out in forty eight hours, if the weather is favorable, the voracious little creatures beginning thei1 attack at once npon the green chlorophyll of the leaf, gorging themselves by in. cessant eating until they can scarcely maintain their hold on the plant. When they first emerge from the shell they are totally black, but gradually bright saf iron spots appear as they increase in size, which they do very rapidly. They soon drop to the ground, into which they burrow, and in ten or fifteen days emerge therefrom with stripped wings, in full beetle form. If the season IS favorable

 two broods are developed into active force during the summer, and third brood goes into the ground to hibernate

 coming out in the spring in time to at tack the shoots of the young potato

 Some idea may be formed of the poten

 tiality of this little insect from the fact that one thousand of them can produce hundred thousann, and these in turr can produce ten millions. The Europ

 can governments have become justly alarmed at the appearance on the Cont nent of this great destroyer of human food, and stringent measures have beer taken to stamp it out, with what success, remains to be seen. The natural food O. this insect is the plant known to botan ists as solomwna, which includes the to bacco-plant, eggplant, tomato, potato and number of other species. The DO tato is native of the Cordilleras, wher, these insects also originated so that il