ROSY IIISPA AND DKOP-WORM. 



was introduced to notice a few years ago by Dr. Brinckle. We have fruited it this 

 season, having it ripe on the last of August. It proves to be a very fair and excellent 

 fruit, ranking with the best summer pears. Size — rather small, roundish-obovate, 

 regular. Skin — greenish yellow, marked with a thin russet and with a marbled red 

 cheek generally. Calyx — rather small, in a narrow, shallow basin. Stalk — one and 

 a half inches long, rather slender, and inserted in a flattened end. Flesh — white, rather 

 coarse, melting, rich, and perfumed, with somewhat of the flavor of the Seckel. Our 

 specimens were irom a double worked tree. The tree is a fair gTOwer, and, judging 

 from two or three years' trial, succeeds well on the quince. This will, we think, be a 

 generally esteemed amateurs' pear, but will be found too small for our markets 

 generally. 



THE ROSY niSPA AND THE DROP-WORM. 



BY PROF. T. W\ HARRIS, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 



[In the latter part of the month of August we were traveling through Jefterson 

 county, N. Y., and observed through the whole country that the Basswood trees, 

 which are very abundant in that part of the country, looked as brown and dry as 

 thouijh some terrible blight had struck them all dead. On examination we found this 

 appearance was owing to the leaves being all devoured, leaving but the skeleton of 

 fibres ; not a leaf had escaped throughout the immense forests which we passed on a 

 journey of some thirty miles or more. The insects had mostly disappeared, but 

 after a lonfj and eao-er search we found one tree, the leaves of which, though 

 reduced to skeletons, were yet thickly covered with the insects. We immediately 

 sent specimens to Prof. Harris, requesting such information as he possessed respecting 

 them, and he has very kindly complied. Insects that appear in such swarms, 

 and commit such havoc, should be known. The other insect, the " Drop-worm," 

 described by Prof. Harris below, was sent us from Tennessee by Mr. Robert 

 Meston, whose note we publish among correspondence. — Ed.] 



Among the leaf-beetles that are injurious to vegetation are those belonging to the 

 tribe called Hispad^e. Such are the little insects which you lately sent to me, and 

 which you found to have destroyed the foliage of the Basswood, or American Linden 

 {Tilia Americana), in Jefferson county, N. Y. A variety of the same insect attacks 

 the leaves of the White Oak, and occasionally those of the Apple tree, also. These 

 leaf-beetles are described in the second edition of my Treatise, pp. 105 to lOY ; and a 

 more full account of them, with figures of the grub and chrysalis, will be found in 

 the first volume of the Boston Journal of Natural History, y)]). 141 to 151. 



The day before your letter came to hand, I found one of these beetles, which had 

 just emerged from a leaf of the Linden, and I saw several other leaves on the same 

 tree that had been eaten by insects of this kind. In the summer of 1851 the W 

 Oaks in sorne parts of Long Island suffered very much from their attacks ; and 



