STATE AGHICULTURAL SOCIETY. 385 



CHERRY. LEAYES. 



transparent wings tinged with smoky which forms a dusky cloud 

 across the middle of the fore pair, its four anterior legs and the 

 knees of the hind pair dirty yellow or clay colored, their thighs 

 blackish. Length 0.22. See Harris's Treatise, p. 419. 



93. Cherry Abia, ufbia Cerasi, new species. (Hymenoptera. Tenthre- 

 dinidse.) 



I only know this and the following species from specimens bred 

 from cocoons found attached to the limbs of the wild black 

 cherry, which is a sufficient evidence that their larvae subsist upon 

 the leaves of this tree. Like other larvse of the same genera, 

 they will be twenty-footed worms, having two pairs of pro-legs 

 more than the usual number, and they eat the edges of the leaves. 

 The cocoons of both these insects are cylindrical with rounded 

 ends, and are of a tough firm texture, resembling coarse brown 

 paper. Those of the cherry Abia are 0.80 long by 0.38 in 

 diameter. Two of these cocoons were met with last March, upon 

 a low bush witliin three feet of the ground. One of them had 

 been perforated by birds and its inmate destroyed; the other 

 on being brought into a warm room liatched Avithin a fortnight, 

 indicating that with the first warm days of spring these flies come 

 abroad. They cut off one end of the cocoon smoothly, to make 

 tlieir exit from it, the severed end resembling a little lid, some of 

 the loose tlireads upon the outer surface of the cocoon forming a 

 liinge wliereby this lid can be opened and shut. The fly is black 

 witli the abdomen and thighs blue black and the feet and tips of 

 the shanks pale yellow. Its thorax is thinly covered with pale 

 grayish yellow hairs, and its wings are transparent, smoky 

 yellowish, with black veins, those on the basal third pale yellow. 

 Leni^th O.GO, to the tip of the wings 0.80; width 1.35. 



The species of this genus are very few, and little is known of 

 their habits. This is the first one, I believe, which has been 

 found in this country. It resembles a Cimbcx, the antennte being 

 short, with a round knob at their ends sha]»ed like an egg with 

 its large end outwards, and in the specimen before me there are 

 four joints to tliis knob, and li>ur in the stem which precedes it, 

 this being one joint more than the normal number in this genus. 



[At;. Trans.] Y 



