PALMER WORM FRUIT DESTROYED BY IT. 225 



however, a few specimens could be gathered from the leaves for 

 several days afterwards. 



The weather now becoming more moist, with copious showers 

 repeatedly during the month of July, the trees in a measure re- 

 covered their leaves, although the crop of fruit for the year was 

 everywhere destroyed. George Christie of East Greenwich 

 informed me that the trees on his farm, in good bearing years 

 produce probably a thousand bushels of apples, and the pros- 

 pects for an abundant yield were never fairer than they were 

 this year, until this worm made its appearance, blighting the 

 trees and causing the orchard to look as though it had been frost 

 b'tten. And he gathered from it this year only two or three 

 bushels of fruit, of a quality so inferior that it was scarcely 

 worth picking. And similar to this was the experience of the 

 owners of orchards generally — young thrifty trees yielding a 

 scanty supply of inferior fruit which commonly sufficed for 

 family use, nothing being gathered from full grown and old 

 trees. 



The following year, in June, it was universally expected that 

 these worms would again appear, but the month passed away and 

 no traces of them were anywhere to be seen. They could readily 

 be found, however, on searching upon the leaves of the apple trees, 

 but were no more common than several other kinds of worms in 

 the same situation. Last year, 1855, they were quite rare, a very 

 few specimens only having presented themselves to my notice. 

 The present year 'they have been much more abundant, and in 

 gardens in the city of Albany I observed a number of fruit 

 trees the leaves of which had been badly eaten by them. 

 |2 At the time of the appearance of this worm in such myriads 

 in 1853, I was answering a letter from Hon. B. P. Johnson upon 

 another apple tree insect, and inserted therein an account of 

 this worm, with a description of it and the cocoon which it had 

 then formed, stating that I would subsequently complete 

 its history. I suggested that a small gay yellow moth 

 which frequently occurred among apple leaves, a descrip- 

 tion of which under the name of Jlrgyrolepia pomariana I thereto 

 appended, might probably be the parent of these worms. For 

 tfrS'information of my immediate neighbors and friends upon a 



[Assem. No. 215.] 15 



