Cly CHMbian ^ntumobgist 



VOL. VI. LONDON, ONT., JUNE, 1874. No. 6 



ON SOME OE OUR COMMON INSECTS. 



16.— THE GOOSEBERRY SAW-FLY (NemaUis vcntricosns, Klug.) 



BY THE EDITOR. 



This prolific pest, known also in the larval state as the Currant Worm, 

 is now so widely disseminated, and, at this particular season of the year, so 

 abundant and destructive, that it may well be classed among our com- 

 monest insects, and is one in which all cultivators of the gooseberry and 

 currant must take some interest. 



The Saw-flies, the parents of this troublesome brood, usually spend the 

 winter in the chrysalis state, enclosed in a tough, papery-looking, silken 

 cocoon, sometimes on and sometimes under the surface of the ground^ 

 and occasionally fastened on the stems of the currant or gooseberry 

 bushes on which they have been feeding, or in some sheltered spot near 

 by. They make their appearance very early in the season, usually about 

 the third week in April, but sometimes a week later, depending on the 

 temperature ; and by the time the gooseberry bushes are bursting into 

 leaf, these enemies have paired, and the females are ready to deposit their 

 eggs on the new and tender foliage. The gooseberry bushes develope 

 leaves before the currant bushes, and whether it is from this cause alone 

 or from a preference for the gooseberry foliage, we know not, but we find 

 that the gooseberry is the first attacked, and often, if let alone, many 

 bushes will be stripped quite bare of foliage before the eggs deposited on 

 the currant are hatched ; on this account the gooseberry bushes require 

 the first attention. 



Both male and female flies are represented in fig. 16, but magnified. 

 The upper one {a) is the male, b the female ; the hair lines below show 



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