460 



FOKTT-EIGHTH REPORT ON THE STATE MDSEDM 



It is probably identical with Phytoptus persicce, noticed briefly by 

 Murray, in his Economic Entomology — Aptera, p. 354, where it is repre- 

 sented as whitening the leaves of peach-trees, at times, in Montreuil, 

 near Paris, as noticed by M. Guerin-Meneville, in 1851, in Ann. Soc. 

 Ent. France. The white dust covering the trees gave to the attack the 

 name of "the miller" (le meunier). 



A Plum-Tree Phytoptus. 



Mr. Slingerland has recently had brought to his notice, a mite 

 inhabiting small, subspherical excrescences encircling the base of buds 

 and shoots of plum twigs received from Industry, Pa. Dr. Riley, 

 several years ago, had examples of probably the same mite sent to him 

 from plum-trees in New York and in Ohio. Mr, Slingerland, in the 

 Canadian Entomologist^ for December, 1895, has referred the mite to 

 Phytoptus phloeocoptes Nalepa, and given a figure of the mite and 

 infested twigs. 



Undoubtedly a large number of these gall-mites will be discovered in 

 the United States. Professor Garman has indicated fourteen species 

 of Phytoptus, of which ten (the other four undescribed) are given in 

 the Preliminary List of JSF. A. Acarina, 1886, of Osborn and Under- 

 wood. A large number of Phytoptus galls have been observed. So 

 long ago as in 1885, Dr. Hagen, in a paper contained in the February 

 issue of the Canadian Entomologist, states, that there are fifty-one 

 American Phytoptus galls in the collection of the Museum of Compara- 

 tive Zoology, and that sixty-eight are known from North America, 

 belonging to forty-two species of plants, thirty- three genera and twenty- 

 three families. 



