124 Forty-fifth Report on the State Museum. 



Reference was made, and a brief notice given, in the Report for 

 last year, to injuries to apple buds, blossoms, and leaves by the 

 caterpillar of another Tortricid moth, Tmetocera ocellana (Schiff .), 

 or the eye-spotted bud-moth — so named from an eye-like spot on 

 its wings. The present year it has greath^ multiplied in the 

 " apple-belt " of Western New York ; and its pernicious work in 

 eating into the buds, and destroying the blossoms, and feeding on 

 the tender foliage, has materially lessened the production of fruit 

 in many localities. A large orchardist in Wayne county has 

 written me that he has found it almost impossible to check, in the 

 slightest degree, its ravages, and that it has done him more harm 

 than all other apple pests combined. A full knowledge of its life- 

 history, which we do not yet possess, will, it is hoped, reveal some 

 simple and effective means by which it may be controlled. 



Of the comparatively small number of insects attacking the 

 pear, and none of which have seriously interfered with its culti- 

 vation, two insects have emerged from their obscurity during the 

 present year, and have been the occasion of no little alarm in 

 localities where they have abounded. Of these, the pear-tret: 

 Psylla pyricola Foerst., — an aphis-like creature, has been quite 

 destructive in orchards in Greene and Columbia counties on the 

 Hudson river, through sucking the sap from the buds, leaves, and 

 stems of the young fruit, and covering them and the twigs 

 with an impervious coating of honey -dew. Later in the season a 

 fungus develops upon this viscid excretion and blackens the twigs 

 and terminal branches of the infested trees as if they had been 

 painted. From an orchard in Columbia county where the crop 

 gave promise of yielding 1,200 bushels of pears — as the result of 

 the operations of this insect, only 400 bushels of indifferent fruit 

 was gathered. 



The other of the two is the pear-midge, Diplosin i^yrivora Riley, 

 which had not, hitherto, been reported in the State of Kew 

 York — its only known locality in the United States being 

 Meriden, Conn., where it is believed to have been introduced 

 from France about fifteen years ago. The eggs of the parent midge 

 are deposited in the blossom before they open, and the larva? there- 

 from, to the number of twenty or more, burrow and feed within 

 the young fruit wholly withdrawn from the reach of insecticidal 

 applications. At maturity they escape from the fruit and drop 



