Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Colorado Beetle

COLORADO BEETLE, a beetle first described by Thomas Say, in 1824, from specimens found by him near the Upper Missouri. He called it Doryphora decemlineata. The genus doryphora had been previously founded by Illiger. The genus is American, and is placed under the chrysomelidæ. The larva of the species distinguished as decemlineata feeds greedily on the potato, and having attracted notice in Colorado for its ravages among the crops of that esculent in the Territory, it moved eastward year by year, till in 1874 it had reached the Atlantic seaboard.