STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 427 



CURRANT. LEAVES. 



140. Currant bark louse, Lecanium JRihis, new species. (Homopfera. 

 Coccidae.) 



A hemispherical scale of a brownish yellow color, about 0.30 

 in diameter, adhering to the bark of the garden currant, its mar- 

 gin finely wrinkled transversely; often perforated with one, two 

 or three holes, from which have issued minute brilliant green 

 four-winged flies which in their larva state have fed upon and con- 

 sumed the minute eggs which originally existed under tliese 

 scales. This is quite comrao;i in some gardens, and I suspect has 

 been introduced into this country with the currant, although 

 European authors have made no mention of a scale insect as 

 belonging either to this shrub or the gooseberry. It will be most 

 readily found before the leaves put forth in the spring. 



AFFECTING THE LEAVES. 



141 American Currant uoth, j^braxasl Ribearia. Titch. (Lepidoptera 

 Geometridse.) 



About the middle of June, eating the leaves of the currant and 

 gooseberry, in some gardens stripping the buslies entirely naked; a 

 cylindrical ten-footed measure worm nearly an inch long, bright 

 yellow varied on each side with white and with numerous black 

 spots and large round dots regularly arranged, each giving out a 

 fine black bristle, burying itself slightly and clianging to a pupa 

 without forming any cocoon; tlie moth coming out therefrom 

 about tlie first of July, of a pale nankin yellow color, tlie wings 

 with one or more faint dusky spots behind their middle in tlie 

 male and in the female with an irregular band crossing both pairs. 

 Width 1.30 to 1.45. 



This is the most remarkable depredating insect wliich we have 

 upon the currant in this country. It was fully figured and 

 described in the Transactions of this Society ten years ago (vol. 

 vii, p. 461), at which time it was much more numeruus within 

 the sphere of my observation than it has since been, although 

 scarcely a year has passed but that some gardens might be seen 

 with their currant bushes nearly or quite defoliated by it. If liae 

 'been more numerous the present year (1857) than for several 

 years before, and I learn from Kev. Wm. C. Reichel that in 



