New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 487 



destructive diseases as brown rot and black rot. In New York we 

 have observed no damage by this species as a fruit pest. As has been 

 suspected of niveus, there seems to be good evidence that this insect 

 is in some way connected with the transmission of a bark disease of 

 apples. Hopkins 2 has described the occurrence of diseased areas or 

 cankers which he detected about the egg punctures of a tree cricket in 

 apple orchards in West Virginia. He states that this peculiar injury 

 to apple trees appears to be " quite common in all old orchards and is 

 quite a serious trouble in some localities." The character of the 

 injury is clearly shown in Plate XXXIII. 



" A quite small and nearly round puncture is made through the 

 outer bark, and from one to two long cavities are formed in the inner 

 bark and sometimes grooving the outer surface of the wood. The 

 wound thus made sometimes heals without doing harm but it often 

 causes a blighted condition of the bark as shown in [Plate XXXIII, 

 fig. 1,] and if the entire branch does not die, and it often does not, the 

 woolly aphis attacks the edges of the wound and prevents it from 

 healing. Thus an ugly scar or deformed place is the result as in [Plate 

 XXXIII, figs. 2, 3]. Many branches so injured ultimately break off 

 or die, so that the injury to a tree may be such as to cause it 

 to rapidly deteriorate and soon become worthless as a fruit producer. 



" It appears that the insect does not oviposit in rapidly growing 

 branches on young trees, but selects those which are making slow 

 growth. Thus when the wound is attended with blight and is 

 subsequently attacked by the woolly aphis the wound seldom heals, 

 the exposed wood commences to decay, and the branch dies, breaks 

 off or becomes unproductive." 



The identity of the species was not discovered by Hopkins, but from 

 his description of the paired egg punctures there can be little doubt 

 that at least part of the injury as described was due to oviposition 

 by angustipennis. We have examined a number of small branches 

 from West Virginia which were well covered with cankers. The 

 branches were about one-half or three-quarters of an inch in diameter, 

 and some of the cankers showed an area of bare wood in which the 

 groove made by the ovipositor of the cricket could be plainly seen. 

 A good many of the egg punctures were paired, and angustipennis is 

 the only species we know which lays its eggs in this manner in the 

 bark, although it also deposits them singly. 



2 A. D. Hopkins. W. Va. Exp. Sta. Bui. 50. 1898. 



