428 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 



CURRANT. LEAVES. 



Eastern Pennsylvania this same insect has this year totally con- 

 sumed tlie currant leaves in several gardens. A letter from 

 Lorenzo Rouse of Paris Hill, Oneida county, enclosing some of 

 these worms in a vial of spirits and soliciting information respecting 

 them, states that thej were first noticed in that vicinity three years 

 ago, and that they have continued to increase since that time, 

 stripping the leaves from tlie gooseberries first and then from the cur- 

 ran cs. Our wild gooseberry {Ribes Cymohati) was probably the 

 original habitat of this insect, for I have noticed the moth around 

 that bush, growing in tlie angles of fences, in years when none 

 were observed in gardens; and perhaps one of these buslies set in 

 an infested garden would allure most of these insects to it and 

 render their destruction more ^asy than when they are scattered. 

 Where these insects once establish themselves they there remain. 

 The same gardens in my neighborhood which were most severely 

 ravaged by them ten and twelve years ago are the ones in which 

 they have been most numerous the present year, notwithstanding 

 that in some of the intervening years these gardens have appeared 

 to be nearly or quite free from them. 



Mr. Rouse states that he has applied lime, ashes, soot, snuff, 

 tobacco water and whale oil soap suds to his bushes, but all to no 

 purpose. Shaking the bushes and picking tlie worms off by hand 

 and destroying them is probably the only effectual mode of exter- 

 minating them, as I have heretofore said. Choice varieties of the 

 gooseberry and currant may be securely protected by wholly enclos- 

 ing each bush in netting made of the cheap fiibric used for musketo 

 bars, or some similar material, every worm upon these bushes 

 being previously dislodged. 



142. Progne butterfly, Vanessa (Grapta) Progne, Yah. (Lepidoptera. 

 Nymphalidae.) 



Eating the leaves the latter part of June, a gray w*orm 1.25 

 long with a white head and branching white prickles, their points 

 black; the pupa hanging with its head downwards from the under 

 side of a limb about twelve days and the fore part of July giving 

 out a butterfly with scalloped wings, the hind pair black shaded 

 into tawny yellow at their base where is two black dots, their 

 under sides with a central silvery straight mark bent to an obtuse 

 ano;le somewhat resembling the letter L. Width about 2.00. 



