Colorado Beetle's Suffolk Advent

l'RANSACTIONS. COLORADO BEETLES' SUFFOLK ADVENT.

BY A MEMBER.

THE jubilation with which our Members welcomed the return of the Avocet to Suffolk two or three years ago cannot be extended to hail this season's equally peaceful, not to say insidious, penetration of Leptinotarsa decimlineata, Say. Despite the widest advertisement and the Ministry's most frantic efforts, the dreaded Colorado Beetle, which has already in past years surrounded us in Essex and Cambs. and Norfolk, is at last in our midst. Members have been kept so well posted* in its history and ravages that they need not be iterated here. This year its debut by three examples took place in Nottingham crates of Lettuces from Spain on 3 April. There followed one at Littleborough near Rochdale in French Cauliflowers on 6 May ; and hundreds were windblown from France to the Jersey coast beaches on 14 May. Then it approached us : in Essex it was reported at Boreham, Hullbridge and Boxsted near Colchester, where on Potatoes the Beetle and several of its larvae occurred on 21 July.

Another Beetle, with larvae, was finally detected on 26 July in Suffolk. These were upon a Potato-crop in Santon Downham, on the Norfolk border near Brandon : some two hundred of the larvae were found and the crop sprayed by officials from Cambridge. —Why should administrative Suffolk always have to fall back upon some other county in an emergency ?—This was no isolated case : by 9 August a second and a third were found. In Brandon itself, at Ling Heath farm, no less than twenty-eight imagines with many pupae were noted. Then came Kent's turn, where sixty Beetles occurred at Thorne farm in Ramsgate on 23 August, bringing outbreaks to twenty-seven this year. Again in north Suffolk, a vessel arrived on 27th at Lowestoft with a cargo of Bayonne timber, amongst which the crew en route had slain nine Beetles alleged to be of the present species. Lastly, near the other end of our County, the Daily Graphic and Ipswich paper among others announced on 30 August the discovery of a solitaire upon garden Potatoes in Trimley near Felixstow.

The above genus Leptinotarsa, Clevr., pertains to the great Phytophaga group of Coleoptera that includes all Longicorns and all Chrysomelides, a fam'ly represented by some 260 British species. *Trans. supra : ii, p. clxii ; iv, p. 180 ; v, pp. lxxxvi and xci ; vi, pp.

41, 120, 219, lix.

[ Thanks to East Anglian Daily Times for this CERVUS

DAMA,

L.,

photograph.

$ $ , in H e l m i n g h a m Park, Suffolk.

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COLORADO BEETLES' SUFFOLK ADVENT

Of these its nearest ally among the Cyclica, at Ieast superficially because striped, is the very local Chrysomela cerealis, L., which belies its name by being confined to Thyme in only Snowdonia.

All Chrysomela are handsome, fat, lethargic Beetles of often beautiful metalb'c coloration, by no means given to Aying. A flight from any part of the Continent to Britain is quite impossible, even the above transport from France at St. Germain to Jersey at La Coupe was doubtless accomplished by their being first blown into the sea and then carried by current across the intervening fifteen miles. N o ; the odd specimens that raise colonies in Britain are ship- or airship-borne, hence comparatively easy upon arrival of that detection upon which we cannot compliment the Ministry of Agriculture.

Our friends of the Plant Laboratory in Milton-road at Harpenden are ever ready to determine any yellow Beetle of 10 mm., i.e. nearly a half-inch in length, with eight black stripes down his back, as well as the conspicuously red larvae. Details of capture should be attached and the whole sent through our terribly destructive post in an airtight tin. One need hardly add that this species is a native of the central Nearctic States ; it has spread during the last Century from the eastern slopes of the Rockies across America and the Atlantic to Europe. T h e majority come to us as another of the curses of Germany.

INSECTS AT SEA.—Trechus obtusus, Er., was running on the dining-table to light on 22 August this year at Monks Soham, where another of the Ground Beetles Amara bifrons, Gyll., flew to it on both 21 and 22nd.—Can you name the enclosed Beetle and Bug ? Both are from Frinton in Essex, during August, where the former [Amara consularis, Duft.] was disinterred from the sand at about two feet below high-water mark ; the latter was found floating on the surface of the sea about a hundred yards from land at extreme low tide : therefore I am hoping that it is a rare neotropical specimen, brought here by the Gulf Stream !—H. C. GRANT ; 22 August. [Unfortunately it is the European Eurydema oleraceum, L . (Trans, v, 102), though quite rare in Essex. T h e allied Hemipteron Lyctocoris campestris, Fall., also occurred on the coast this year : in a Lowestoft beach shelter on 8 June. Also on Lowestoft sea-front in mid-October, the northern ränge of the Homopteron Limotettix stactogala, Am., was extended by its discovery upon its invariable Tamarisk, whereon it is now known at Bawdsey, Southwold and in a Reydon garden.

At Shrublands-farm in Kessingland on 8 October Psylla buxi, L., abounded on box-borders.—Ed.]