REPORT. 



Office of the State Entomologist, 

 Albany, December 10th, 1892. 



To the Regents of the University of the State of New York : 



Gentlemen. — I have the honor of presenting to your Board 

 my Ninth Report on the Injurious and Other Insects of the State 

 of New York, embracing some of the studies and observations of 

 my department during the current year. 



The year has been one of remarkable exemption from insect 

 injuries, as the result, beyond question, of meteorological con- 

 ditions unfavorable to the multiplication of our more common 

 insect pests. This has been particularly noticeable in the very 

 few complaints that have been received of injuries to fruits — 

 certainly not one-fifth of the average of preceding years. While 

 this, in part, may be ascribed to the better knowledge of methods 

 of dealing with the enemies of fruits to which our fruit-growers 

 are becoming educated, and to the rapidly growing use of 

 insecticides and spraying implements, certain it is that several 

 of our more noxious insects, which almost annually are the 

 cause of serious injury, did not present themselves in sufficient 

 number to call for active operations against them. Thus, apple 

 trees for the most part, escaped their customary early spring 

 visitation of the aphis. Aphis raali. The cherry-tree aphis, 

 Myzus cerasi, was not prevalent. The orchard tent-caterpillar, 

 Clisiocampo. Americana^ was far less abundant than in preceding 

 years. Not a single communication came to me relating to the 

 operations of the eye-spotted bud-moth, Tmetocera ocellana, which 

 had been exceedingly destructive in 1891, and a general cause 

 of complaint from the orchardists of Western New York. The 

 pear-tree Psylla, Psylla pyricola, which threatened, in its excessive 

 increase, to extend its destruction to ])ear trees in the Hudson 

 river valley to other portions of the State, has not, during the 

 past season, inflicted any appreciable harm. 



