Simultaneously with the passage of the Danube by the Russians,
it is announced that Sir Wilfrid Lawson's favourite dread, the Colorado beetle, has succeeded in effecting the passage of the Atlantic, and has landed on German soil, being first observed, with numerous larvae, in a potato-field at Mulheim, near Cologne. The German authorities were equal to the occasion, and pro- mising to indemnify the proprietor, they covered the field with sawdust and tanning-bark, over which they poured petroleum- oil, which they set on fire. One beetle, however, was seen on the wing, so that the whole invading force was certainly not exter- minated. "Coloured engravings" of the insect have been issued by our own Commissioners of Customs—just as coloured photographs of escaped criminals are issued by our Commissioners of Police— to all and sundry likely to fall in with the potato-beetle, if he does come. But it will be an unequal war. The beetle, like Shelley's "Desolation," is a "delicate thing," which can easily find har- bourage without being detected by our coarse faculties at all. We shall find it almost as difficult as to make war on Professor Tyndall's "germs."
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