I06 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Curious brown, somewhat flattened cases on mined leaves of English and Scotch elm 



Elm case bearer, Coleophora limosipennella. p. 167 

 Red maple leaves folded in August or September,, containing a long, tapering, blackish 

 tube, with the adjacent tissues on the underside skeletonized 



Maple trumpet skeletonizer, T h i o d i a s i g n a t a n a, p. 168 

 Yellowish or brown larcii needles with hollow apex and small circular hole on one side 



I, arch case hearer, Coleophora 1 a r i c e 1 1 a, p. 170 



Forest tent caterpillar : maple worm 

 Malacoso»!a (//ss/r/a Iliibn. 



Blue-headed caterpillars witli a line of silvery diamond-shaped spots down the middle 

 of the back, frequently defoliate maple and other trees in early summer, and when not 

 feeding assemble in clusters on the sides of the larger limbs and trunks. 



Strippiriir a larq-e proportion of the foliat^e from maples has been a 

 marked characteristic of this species for tiie hist four or five years in manv 

 sections of New York, the climax being reached in i8g8 and 1899. The 

 sugar maples of Delaware, Greene and Otsego counties suffered most 

 severely from tin; attacks of this pest in 1897 and 1898, large areas being 

 left with hardly a green leaf. The destructive work of this caterpillar in 

 1899 was more general than in the preceding two years, there having been 

 comj^laints received from al)out half the counties in the State, and in some 

 sections the depredations were worse than ever. This species appeared in 

 force in inany cities and villages, threatening thousands of handsome shade 

 trees with defoliation, and had it not been for most energetic efforts on the 

 part of local authorities and private individuals, many maples along streets 

 and in parks would have been stripped of leaves. This native species is 

 generally distributed and its comijarative abundance in a localit\" is there- 

 fore due to natural causes, favorable or otherwise, and \cr\- rarely can it be 

 said that the insect has migrated to any extent, except in a very local and 

 restricted sense. 



Early history in New York State. The earliest record of injury in this 

 State appears to be that of I )r Rile)-, who reported the species as being 

 (|uite destructive in cc-rtain ])arts of western New \'ork in 1857. Peter 

 l^erris 10 years later, states that this insect had been troublesome in western 



