180 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



vates the disease, which becomes very serious, the patient seldom 

 recovering entirely from it, but being affected by weak eyes ever 

 afterwards. He also had made efforts to ascertain the life-history 

 of the fly, but without success. He is of the opinion that if the in 

 sect is really an above-ground leaf-miner its work would have been 

 noticed by him, as, on account of the great numbers of the flies, the 

 work of the larvae must be very extensive and readily seen. Mr. 

 Marlatt said that he had been similarly annoyed by a fly of the 

 same general appearance around Washington. He thought that 

 the attractiveness of the moisture of the eyes and of sores would 

 indicate that the larva is perhaps saprophagous in its habits and 

 may be found in decaying vegetation. The question of the 

 northern range of the fly having been called up, Mr. Ashmead 

 stated that he had found it in the vicinity of Jacksonville. Mr. 

 Howard said that a very minute fly swarms in extraordinary 

 numbers about the eyes of domestic animals in the vicinity of 

 Washington during the summer months. This insect is also 

 probably an Oscinid. He had collected specimens and en 

 deavored to determine them, but without success. It is another 

 instance of an extremelv common insect which does not seem to 

 have attracted the attention of entomologists. 



Under the head of exhibition of specimens, Mr. Howard 

 showed two scale-insects which he had collected on the summit 

 of Onteora Mountain, in Greene county, N. Y. One was the 

 common scurfy bark-louse of the apple, Chionaspis furftirus, 

 which he found in great abundance upon mountain ash ; and 

 the other was an undetermined Lecanium which affects the striped 

 maple (Acer pennsylvanicum} to such an extent that hardly a 

 twig of this little maple can be found which is not partially 

 covered with this scale-insect. The most interesting thing about 

 it was that he failed, among the thousands of specimens seen, to 

 find one which was living ; all had evidently been killed by a 

 fungus disease. The female scales carried the fruiting form of 

 the fungus, while the male scales were simply destroyed by 

 the mycelium.* 



* This fungus was subsequently determined by Mr. A. F. Woods and 

 M. B. Waite as Cordyceps clavatula (Schw.) Figures and description will 

 be found in Journ. New York Micr. Soc. I, 4, April, 1885. 



