216 Forty-fourth Report on the State Museum 



fruit was cast, and the diseased foliage either fell to the ground or 

 served no vital purpose on the tree. 



This year has been the second one of exemption from the usual 

 defoliation of elms, horse-chestnuts, plum trees, etc., by the tussock 

 caterpillar of Orgyia leucostigma (Sm. Abb.). The caterpillar has 

 been seldom seen ; hardly any of the cocoons of the female bearing 

 the conspicuous egg-deposit have been observed ; and no measures 

 have been necessary for the prevention of its ordinary injuries. 



The boll-worm or corn-worm of the southern states, Heliothis 

 armigei^ Hiibn., which occasionally occurs in southern New York, 

 through the flight hither, it is supposed, and oviposition of one of 

 the later broods of moths, has been reported from Westchester 

 county as seriously damaging sweet corn, in September — nearly 

 every ear in a garden, in one instance, having been ruined by it. 



A minute caterpillar having the pernicious habit of eating into 

 the buds and blossoms of the apple tree when they first appear, or 

 later, of burrowing into the terminal twigs, or spinning together 

 and consuming the tender leaves, has been destructive in some of 

 the orchards of the western part of the state. It is known, locally 

 as the bud- worm, and scientifically as the larva of Tmetocera ocellana 

 (Schiff.). Its injuries are preventable by early spraying — in 

 advance of the time for blossoming. 



From the unusual number of inquiries received from orchardists 

 of the apple-leaf Bucculatrix, Bucculatrix pomifoUella Clemens, it 

 is apparent that this insect is rapidly multiplying within our 

 borders, and that effort should be made to check its increase before 

 it shall have become generally distributed. It is not difticult to 

 control by methods that have been already pointed out. 



Another of the interesting assemblages within dwelling-houses 

 of a small fly, named and described in a former report as Chloro- 

 pisca proliflca Osten Sacken, has been brought to my notice and 

 been given careful study. It is but the third record of the kind 

 for the United States — the two others being at Franklin, N. H., 

 and Alfred Centre, N. Y. In Europe, a number of similar gather- 

 ings for winter abode of an allied species have been observed and 

 recorded within the last sixty years. The source and food-plants of 

 the insect have been an enigma to European scientists, but the preva- 

 lent belief has been that it breeds in some of the grain-fields. From 

 observations made the past season, it seems probable that it will 

 soon be ascertained beyond question that the breeding-place of the 

 fly is in the lawn grasses that surround the dwellings. 



Two species of plant-eating beetles have appeared on Long 

 Island in such remarkable and unwonted numbers, that it seemed 



