Locust with wings spread: tip of male abdomen to the right, and of female abdomen to the left. (After Conil, but reduced ⅙.)
FIG. 55.—SOUTH AMERICAN MIGRATORY LOCUST, SCHISTOCERCA PARENENSIS (MALE).
From Lawrence Bruner’s Locust Investigation Commission Report, Buenos Aires.
July 20, 1898.
I am working now on what I hope to bring out in the autumn as a good thick volume, called, “Handbook of Insects Injurious to Orchard and Bush Fruits, with means of Prevention and Remedy,” very fully illustrated. I am trying to include all the attacks of any real importance of which observations have been sent to me in the past twenty-one years, and though I give these from British observations to a great extent, I am trying to bring them all up to date. I hope you approve of the idea. Our fruit industry is increasing so much, that more information is needed for growers; but I do not feel sure I should have had courage to begin it, if some one had not written to me that he purposed bringing out a book on insect pests, and would like the use of my figures to illustrate it! It occurred to me that when he was about it he might like my letterpress also! So I have set to work and I have got to about p. 224.
There are more of the rarer attacks about than usual this year—Atomaria linearis at mangolds, for instance. This morning I heard from Messrs. Laxton, of Bedford, that they have gained a complete victory over that destructive pest, the Strawberry ground beetle, or beetles, I should say (in this instance cockchafers, fig. [58]). They bought a multitude of pudding basins and sunk them in the strawberry beds, baited with sugar and water, and tempting solids, and the beetles were caught in hosts, sometimes by the half basin full. I think this is real good news for strawberry growers.
I wish I knew better how to manage my work. I do not think I should have any difficulty in keeping the real work in hand, but there is so much correspondence on subjects which, indeed, one can hardly call even allied, and yet I suppose one should return a reply, and that adds uselessly to the work. How well you must know this sort of thing!
I was grieved at the loss of our kind Dr. Lintner,[[78]] and I saw my good friend Mr. T. P. Newman about some not wholly inadequate notice being inserted in the “Entomologist.” I could from my heart record his exceeding kindness to his weaker brethren.
Magnified; natural length, one twenty-fourth of an inch.
(After Taschenberg.)
FIG. 56.—PIGMY MANGOLD BEETLE, ATOMARIA LINEARIS, STEPHENS.
July 28, 1899.