MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I914. 25 



to Spend the summer of 191 3 in this state collecting, rearing and 

 studying the larvae of Maine sawflies. This was in accordance 

 with our present entomological policy of having, when possible, 

 certain groups of economic insects worked up by scientists who 

 have made a specialty along that particular line, the printed 

 results of such study to appear among the papers published by 

 this Station. 



Our first contribution on larvae of sawflies, too technical to be 

 published as a bulletin for general distribution, appeared in the 

 Forty-Fourth Annual Report of the Entomological Society of 

 Ontario, the substance of the paper having been delivered before 

 that society by Doctor MacGillivray after his* summer's work in 

 Maine. The following paragraphs are for the most part adapted 

 from his contribution. 



A sawfly belongs to the same order of insects as the bees and 

 wasps but instead of having a sting for an ovipositor, its ^g 

 laying apparatus is equipped with a small saw with which it cuts 

 a slit in the tissue of the plant and deposits an Ggg in the opening. 

 The adult or winged sawfly does practically no harm, but the 

 young which hatch from her eggs are as greedy as caterpillars 

 and as completely demolish the foliage they feed upon. These 

 larvae resemble hairless caterpillars somewhat in their appear- 

 ance as well as in their feeding habits and are frequently mis- 

 taken for them. 



The eggs are always laid by the female within the tissue of 

 the food plant. Where the larvae are borers, they are laid in 

 holes pierced in the stems of bushy plants or in the limbs or 

 trunks of living or recently dead trees. Where the larvae are 

 leaf-feeders, the eggs are placed in slits sawed by the female 

 from the under surface and located between the two layers of 

 parenchyma. A few species insert their eggs in the petiole of 

 the leaf, some of the gall-making species in the leaf-buds, and 

 one in the blossoms of cherry on the sepals or the upper part 

 of the calyx cup. The eggs are oval in outline, flattened, usually 

 white in color, though sometimes bluish or greenish, and very 

 difficult to locate when first laid. They swell after a short time 

 to twice their original size and push out the surface of the leaf 

 so that it appears to be covered with little mounds. 



The manner of feeding is strikingly varied. With many 

 species, the young larvae as soon as they emerge from the egg, 



