THE BALEFUL BEETLE
By JOHN WILTON
THAT a mere beetle should be taken into custody by the police, and thereafter conveyed many miles under escort to a place of interrogation, seems. an idea too outrageously farcical even for an Irish humorist. This precise event has recently been witnessed at Wolverhampton, and its instant appeal to the sense of the ridiculous should be resisted, for the arrested insect has been confirmed by experts of the Ministry of Agriculture as an undoubted specimen of the Colorado Beetle. A crate of lettuces from Holland was the vehicle chosen by the illegal immigrant. What can happen once can happen again, and-it is very likely that others of the species may follow, or worse still have preceded, the single discovered culprit.
For almost a century the Colorado Beetle has been feared wherever the potato has been cultivated. Its home State of Colorado has gained unfortunate notoriety from its very name, for it was there in the early 1850's that it descended from wild obscurity in the foothills of the Rockies to devour the potato patches of the first settlers. It only needed twenty years to gnaw its way right across the United States to the Atlantic seaboard, spreading such devastation that pessimists predicted the extinction of the potato as a crop of economic importance. Fortunately, counter-measures were developed, which, although expensive, did enable cultivation to continue.
Established from Quebec to New York, the beetle was clearly all set for the Atlantic crossing, a possibility which the growers of Europe naturally regarded with extreme apprehension. There was already experience enough of similar importations from the New World. At that very moment the Phylloxera seemed to have destroyed the immortal wines of France and was spreading across Europe. Oddly enough, this aphis-like creature, which was said to have cost' France double the amount of the indemnity paid to Prussia in 1871, was also supposed to have originated in Colorado, where it parasi- tised wild vines. Such an association cannot have made the beetle from the same State sound any less alarming. The American Downy Mildew of the vine of thirty years earlier was not forgotten either. So Governments rushed to act, and the Colorado Beetle gained the distinction of prompting the first agricultural quaran- tine legislation in this country—the Destructive Insects and Pests Act of 1877.
Although it did not succeed in crossing the Atlantic in force until 1917, the Colorado Beetle gained a public notoriety in England which it has never lost. The learned historian of entomology, Dr. Burr, has recorded a jingle with the authentic flavour of its period which was heard in the provincial pantomimes of 1887. The Demon King, dressed in appropriate costume of black and yellow stripes, sang: "Take care of your little potatoes, toys!
And all your tiny spuds.
Just watch your jolly cauliflowers And all your fuchsia buds!
You'd better hide your bread and cheese, And everything you've got, For the Colorado Beetle's come To collar the jolly lot! "
And so on, no doubt, to the extent of several further verses of doubt- ful scansion, with chorus ad. lib.
The portrait of this desperate insect, much larger than life and
through all its metamorphoses of egg, grub, pupa and adult beetle of vespoid garb, became a familiar feature of the County Police notice board. Country children were early made beetle-conscious. In fact, the pioneer leaflet on the subject was issued by the Royal Agricultural Society as early as 1875 ; ever since then the Colorado Beetle has been treated to a blaze of publicity, fully justified by its destructive powers. Deliberate introduction into this country was art idea of such obvious appeal to the Nazi mentality, and in theory so simple, that an intensified poster-campaign continued throughout the war. Today, with infestation serious in devastated countries owing to neglect of counter-measures caused by lack of necessary mater'ols, publicity is highly intensified. The capture of a real live specimen among the Wolverhampton lettuces is a reward, just if long delayed, for the expenditure which must have been incurred. It certainly would not have happened without all the work done to educate the public. Market-workers are busy people, and one might have expected the occasional insect among the vegetables to be stamped on, if not ignored altogether.
That the instruction to forward any suspected insect to the Ministry of Agriculture must have resulted over the years in a postal flow of miscellaneous Colgoptera which were everything but Colorado Beetles will not have dismayed the official plant pathologists at Harpenden. Rather will they have rejoiced, knowing that a watchful army was on the look-out, that a serious infestation could hardly occur without being notified. For, the pest once established in a potato- growing area, its rate of multiplication is enormous. Within eighteen months of the probable date of first importation through Bordeaux the situation over a wide area of South-Western France was out of control, with experts reporting complete eradication as impossible. Despite stringent control measures, the beetle had reached Germany by 1924, and has substantially reduced the yield of the European potato crop ever since. On one occasion it obtained a foothold here—in fields near Tilbury—but Draconian measures were taken in time and the invasion went no further. But, as a result, the insect was given a Statutory Order all to itself, the Colorado Beetle Order of August 23rd, 1933. The strictest inspec- tion of imported potatoes and seed has been maintained, and quarantine enforced against infected areas. This year we are denied " earlies " from Jersey because that unlucky island is at present infected.
The potato is an unfortunate plant. So formidable is the list of diseases to which it is subject that it might well be wondered how anyone dares to grow this necessary vegetable at all. Apart from the celebrated and deadly Blight tout court, which depopulated Ireland a century ago this year, there are the Scabs, Powdery, Common and Black ; the Rots, Brown, Pink and Winter, and the sinister Rot known as Black Leg. If this were not enough (and the catalogue is incomplete), there are always waiting the so-called degenerative diseases, many still of uncertain etiology, the Blattroll- krankheit of the Germans, the Leaf Curls and Leaf Rolls, Mosaic Disease, and many others of less importance, but with common names no less expressive and menacing. The plant pathologists of a dozen countries are engaged in a constant struggle to devise methods of combating all these, and to breed new varieties which may be disease-resistant. The work of our own Potato Virus Research Station under Dr. Salaman at Cambridge has a justified international fame. The British farmer is fortunate that he has not also to contend with the prime insect destroyer of the crop, the Colorado Beetle, and can concentrate his skill in keeping disease at bay. May it be long that the presence of a single Colorado Beetle in this country warrants newspaper headlines.
Previous page
