46 



Coleopliora laricella, Hb., is the smallest species with which we 

 have yet had to deal ; it measures but one-third of an inch in expanse 

 and is of a uniform shining grey colour. The moth is on the wing 

 in June and July, and the female deposits her eggs on the needles 

 of the larch trees, one egg only on any one needle. The young 

 larva tunnels in the larch needle, the end of which soon shrivels 

 up. Out of this ruined portion of the needle it forms a case which 

 it lines with silk and takes about with it to other needles, on which 

 it also feeds, until it is ready for hibernation, when it attaches the 

 case to a branch or to the stem of the tree, in some crevice where it 

 passes the winter. In spring it returns to the needles on which it 

 feeds up, enlarging the case from time to time as its growth 

 requires. Towards the end of May it attaches the case firmly to a 

 needle and turns to a pupa within it, and in due time the moth 

 emerges.'^ It will no doubt seem incredible that such a minute 

 creature can cause real harm to so great a tree as the larch, but it is a 

 question, in this case, of numbers not size. In a badly infested 

 plantation the moths occur in such countless myriads that their 

 depredations upon the needles so impoverish the trees, that they 

 soon become sickly and a prey for fungoid growths, aphids, bark 

 beetles, and other pests that seldom attack healthy trees, and the 

 work of destruction begun by these tiny moths is thus soon 

 completed. 



In concluding my remarks, a quotation from an address delivered 

 byDr. L. 0. Howard to the American Association for the advancement 

 of Science, at its meeting in December last, at Toronto, may not be 

 out of place. He says, " Few people realise the critical situation 

 which exists at the present time. Men and nations have always 

 struggled among themselves — but there is a war, not among human 

 beings, but between all humanity and certain forces that are arrayed 

 against it. Man is the dominant type on this terrestrial body; he 

 has overcome most opposing animate forces ; he has subdued or 

 turned to his own use nearly all kinds of living creatures. There 

 still remain, however, the bacteria and protozoa that carry disease, 

 and enormous forces of injurious insects which attack him from 

 every point, and constitute to-day his greatest rival in the control of 

 ^Nature. They threaten his life daily; they shorten his food supplies 

 both in his crops while they are growing and in such supplies after 

 they are harvested and stored, in his meat animals, in his comfort, 

 in his clothing, in his habitations, and in countless other ways. In 

 many ways they are better fitted for life on this earth than he is. 

 They constitute a much older geological type, and it is a type which 

 had persisted for countless years before he made his appearance, and 

 this persistence has been due to characteristics which he does not 



1^ Collinge, "A Manual of Injurious Insects," p. 171. 



