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The insect you sent with your letter of April 10th
was submitted to the
Bureau of Entomology and has been identified
by them as shown by the copy
of their letter sent herewith.
Nothing appears to have been known
previously regarding its
habits.
The insect imported to combat the boll weevil was not
the army ant. Their
habits are very different. They live in
relatively small colonies and do
not travel more than a few
yards from their nests.
We have issued nothing new regarding rubber culture
since Bulletin 49.
Your letter of the 22nd instant was duly received. The
specimen which
accompanied it, from Dr. Paul Osterhout, of Bocas
del Toro, Panama, proves
to be Sassula costalis Fowl., a hemipterous
insect, described in Biologia Centrali Americana, Rhynchota
Vol. 1. p. 68,
fig. 12. No biologic facts accompany this
description, but the specimens
were collected in Nicaragua.
This insect is somewhat allied to the Buffalo
tree-hopper, and
would probably place its eggs in little slits in the bark,
and,
from analogy with other insects of the same class, would hardly
have any occasion to girdle the twig, although this may be a
feature of the
biology of this particular species. If this habit
is based on a correct
observation, it undoubtedly has something
to do with oviposition, and the
remedy probably would be in
collecting the eggs of the insect, either in
the severed twig or
in the twig immediately below the point of severance.
Its only
means of girdling the twig would be with its ovipositor. It
is, of ocurse, possible that some other insect has done the girdling,
and
this Fulgorid was simply fairly common on the trees and
had nothing to do
with the girdling.