WHOLE VOL. APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY HOWARD 49 



The seventh report is prefaced by a lithographed plate of the Hes- 

 sian fly. It continues the consideration of insects affecting grain 

 crops, and is much shorter than the sixth report. The sixth covered 

 126 pages, and the seventh only 44. This seventh report contains 

 an account of the Angoumois moth, but is devoted principally to the 

 Hessian fly and to joint-worms. It also contains a little account of the 

 European grain sawflies and a supplementary notice of the wheat 

 midge. 



The following year (1862) proved to be very extraordinary from 

 the almost total absence of injurious insects. Fitch wrote in his 

 letter of transmittal that he " was not a little disconcerted to discover 

 a total want of any interesting materials in the fields, the orchards 

 and the forests " on which to bestow his attention. All he could find 

 were the excrescences or galls upon the oaks or other trees and 

 shrubs. The season was noted, however, by one striking thing, and 

 that was the appearance of the asparagus beetle on Long Island. As 

 a result this eighth report contained an account of this insect and sev- 

 eral so-called garden fleas (Smynthurus). He added an account of 

 the vaporer moth, with a description of its egg-parasite, and of a new 

 rose beetle. He appended to this report an historical notice of the 

 first starting of the Hessian fly in this country, and also an account 

 of earthworms. 



Of course, it is difficult at this time to explain the absence of injuri- 

 ous insects complained of by Fitch in this 1862 report. My colleague, 

 Mr. J. A. Hyslop, has looked up the temperature and precipitation 

 records, and tells me that the winter of 1861 was dry, with but little 

 snow cover, up to January, which month was much wetter than nor- 

 mal ; that from February to June the temperature and precipitation 

 were below normal, but not exceptionally so, and the only decided 

 deviations were the very wet January, the very dry May and the 

 exceptionally wet June ; the spring as a whole was cool and delayed. 



In the ninth report he again considers insects infesting gardens, 

 and opens with a long account of the tobacco horn-worm and its 

 parasites. In this reix)rt for the first time appears the Colorado 

 potato beetle which at that time had not reached New York State but 

 was expected. He devotes a page to the garden tiger moth, and con- 

 cludes with an account of cutworms and of the " Nebraska bee-killer," 

 a robber fly which he names Trupanea apivora. The ninth report 

 covers 48 pages. 



The tenth report continues the consideration of garden insects. 

 It treats of the cucumber beetle, the three-lined potato beetle, the 

 hop aphis, the barberry aphis, and the flattened centipede which he 



