i67 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [May, 04 



and avoiding the dense woods, enter a field overgrown with 

 weeds and occasional clumps of higher shrubbery. The first 

 thing to attract attention is the unusual appearance of the 

 young leaves of the wild cherry bushes ; instead of being 

 smooth and perfect they are crumpled and twisted into a knot, 

 as if nipped by a late frost ; but by carefully pulling apart the 

 entangled leaflets, a small green larva with a black head will 

 be found in a central cavity, and if we are not very careful he 

 will wriggle away so quickly that he will escape to the ground 

 and be forever lost. We can soon fill a vial with these, break- 

 ing off the crumpled leaves only, and carefully avoiding open- 

 ing them or disturbing the tenants, as it is reasonably sure 

 that if the first one examined is occupied, all others on the 

 same kind of plant and of same general appearance will contain 

 each its larva. A few weeks later the moths that emerge will 

 likel}^ prove to be Archips rosaceana Har. 



Happening to glance downward, our attention is attracted 

 by the peculiar appearance of some of the leaves of the late 

 purple aster (^Aster patens Ait.), which at this earlj^ season of 

 the year is but a slender stalk twelve to fifteen inches tall, 

 with delicate leaves shaped like a spear or arrow-head ; several 

 leaves on each plant have one edge, for the entire length of 

 the leaf, evenly turned up and fastened down, forming a httle 

 tunnel open at each end, about an eighth of an inch in diam- 

 eter, looking almost like the retreat of a small spider. 



In some of these tunnels will be found a very pretty larva 

 with head and thoracic segments a deep mahogany brown and 

 the abdominal segments pale green, with a number of narrow 

 dark red stripes on the back and sides running from the thorax 

 to the anal end. We will collect as many of these as possible, 

 as the moth that will come from them is a very beautiful Gele- 

 chid, Trichotaphe flavocostclla Clem. 



Close by is a small pitch-pine sapling. Some of the needles 

 look dead and brown for about half of their length. Let us 

 see what is the reason. A close look, and at the beginning of 

 the discolored part is a small hole, and if we break one off and 

 hold it up to the light, about the center of the brown space 

 will be seen a long dark object that careful dissection of the 

 needle will prove to be a very small larva, that exactly fits 

 the inside of the excavated needle ; fifty or more can be com- 



