THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 209 



limited numbers on the wild gooseberry and currant bushes in open 

 woods, and occasionally on the cultivated varieties, but this is the first 

 instance to my knowledge where the insect has appeared in sufficient 

 numbers to cause injury. They are so very subject to parasites that it is 

 not at all likely they will ever prove generally destructive ; syringing the 

 bushes with Paris green and water, or dusting the foliage with powdered 

 hellebore, will soon make an end of them. 



In the neighborhood of Drummondville several acres of red rasp- 

 berries were stripped of their foliage by the larva of the raspberry saw- 

 fly, Selandria rubi; reports of injury from this pest have also been 

 received from several other localities. It is a green worm which is so 

 exactly of the color of the young foHage it feeds on that it frequently 

 escapes detection. When examined this larva is found to much resemble 

 that well known pest, the currant worm, but it has no black dots. If 

 allowed to pursue their course they soon riddle the leaves, leaving little 

 more than a net-work of the coarser veins. An application of hellebore 

 mixed with water, in the proportion of an ounce of the powder to a pail- 

 ful of water, speedily destroys them. 



A new clover insect has recently invaded our Province which promises 

 to be troublesome. It is a small curculio known to entomolgists as the 

 punctured clover-leaf weevil, Phytonotnus pundatus. It is said to have 

 been introduced from Europe within the past few years. The late Dr. Le- 

 Conte, in a work published in 1876, reports having received one specimen 

 from Canada, but at that time nothing seemed to have been known of its 

 habits. In 1881 Prof Riley published in the American Naturalist .^ an ac- 

 count of the injury done to clover fields in Yates county. New York, by 

 this insect ; in one instance in a patch of two acres scarcely a whole leaf 

 remained. The beetle is about two-fifths of an inch long, of a dark brown 

 color, marked with dull yellow, and has its wing cases thickly punctured. 

 Each female is said to deposit from 200 to 300 eggs, which are sometimes 

 laid on the surface of the leaf stem, but more frequently thrust into the in- 

 terior of the older stems. The young larvae may be found as early as in 

 May, but being small they do not usually attract notice until almost a 

 month later. At first they feed among the folded young leaves or at- 

 tached to the under side of a leaf. When approaching full growth they 

 feed chiefly on the margins of the leaves, into which they eat irregular 

 holes. At this period they are not easily seen, as they relax their hold 

 and drop suddenly to the ground when approached ; moreover, they feed 



