THE RESPLENDENT SHIELD-BEARER AND THE 

 RIBBED- COCOON -MAKER: TWO INSECT IN- 

 HABITANTS OF THE ORCHARD. 



By It. E. Snodgbass, 

 Office of Deciduous Fruit Insects, Bureau of Entomology. 



[With 3 plates.] 

 THE RESPLENDENT SHIELD-BEARER. 



In the early days of autumn, when the orchard begins to color with 

 the mellow tints of fall, there may be seen in many of the apple leaves 

 little oval holes, each in the larger end of a triangular spot of dead- 

 leaf tissue. An examination of the twigs and branches of the same 

 trees will reveal, attached to them here and there, small yellowish 

 scalelike objects fastened at one end to the bark by a cluster of root- 

 like threads. These disks may be fitted exactly into the perforations 



Fig. 1. — Showing -winter cases of the Resplendent Shield-Bearer attached to twigs in 

 late fall, and holes in leaves where they were cut from the summer mines. 



of the leaves, thus identifying their origin, but giving no hint of 

 how they arrived at their present positions on the twigs. If, how- 

 ever, we split open one of the little shields, there is disclosed within 

 a diminutive caterpillar, whom we may rightly suspect of having cut 

 out the bit of leaf and carried it away to use as a winter home. If 

 not disturbed, the caterpillar would have hung up in his case all 

 winter, transformed within it to a pupa in the spring, and finally 

 come out as a minute, feathery moth. 



When the caterpillar first hangs up in its case it is a dark, flat- 

 bodied legless creature, but it soon sheds its skin and becomes a 



485 



