Twelfth REroRx of the State Entomologist 



259 



and eventually maturetl. The next day some recently hatched ones 

 found on a tree were transferred to an old leaf, and a fair proportion of 

 them completed their transformations. That the larvae actually mature 

 on old foliage is rendered certain by the development of a large second 

 brood on a number of trees which had been scarcely injured by the first 

 brood, and by the continued breeding 

 of the insect on them until late in the 

 autumn, as recorded before. A leaf 

 skeletonized by the larvae is shown in 

 figure 4. Many trees had nearly 

 every leaf as badly eaten as the one 

 photographed. 



The ravages of the second brood 

 of beetles in Capitol Park on the 

 American elms ( Uimiis Americana) 

 was much more marked than of the 

 one earlier in the season. One tree 

 was nearly defoliated, and large por- 

 tions of adjacent ones. The injury to 

 American elms in other parts of the 

 city was comparatively slight, so far 

 as observed, although they were in 

 close proximity to badly infested 

 English elms. 



The larvae, under certain circum- 

 stances, may play the part of cannibals. 

 In one instance, when food had not been given them in three days and 

 all the leaves had been eaten, — -upon opening the box containing them, 

 a larva was seen devouring a living pupa : it had already eaten away a 

 large portion of the dorsal wall of its thorax. 



The beetles, as before noted, are ravenous feeders before oviposition — 

 commonly eating large holes in the leaves. In one case observed August 

 31st, they had been skeletonizing an old leaf in a manner very similar to 

 that of the young larvae. The leaf was unusually dry and somewhat 

 dusty, and its unpalatable condition may have been the cause of the 

 departure from their ordinary feeding habit. 





Fig. 



Work of elm-leaf beetle larv*. 



Spread of the Insect in Albany. 

 The area occupied in numbers by the first brood of the insect the 

 present year corresponded quite closely with the thickly infested area of 



