12 Forty-first Report on the State Museum. 



Less damage has been reported by the clover-seed midge, 

 Cecidomyia hguminicola Lintn., from Central New York. Perhaps, 

 as its distribution extends into adjoining States and into Canada, 

 its operations will be less severe where they were first observed. 

 It has become very destructive in Canada, especially in Central 

 and South-western Ontario, where its injuries are only being met 

 by cutting but one crop of cloA^er during the season. Mr. Fletcher, 

 entomologist of the Dominion of Canada, has stated in a recent 

 report: "The only instances where any seed has been reaped are 

 where, instead of allowing the clover to stand in the field till the 

 end of June, it has been fed off by cattle and sheep till the begin- 

 ning or middle of June, and then left to go to seed for the autumn 

 crop. * * * The verdict of all the growers who have 

 tried the experiment now seems to be that two crops can not be 

 secured, and to get any seed at all, the first crop must be pastured 

 until the beginning, and not later than the middle, of June. In 

 this way the minute larv* of the flies, which are to lay the eggs 

 for the second brood, are eaten by the cattle at the same time as 

 the clover and destroyed." 



In my report for 1886, reference was made to the nearly entire 

 destruction of the hop crop of the State, by the hop- vine aphis, 

 PJmrodon liumuli (Schrank), only about one-twelfth of an average 

 crop having been secured. As predicted — in part from the 

 remarkable abundance throughout the latter part of the season of 

 its insatiable destroyers, the lady-birds, and particularly of one 

 species, Adalia hipunctata (Linn.), the two-spotted lady-bird — the 

 hop-yards, the present year, have been favored with an almost 

 entire exempti( )n from aphis attack. Those who are interested in hop 

 culture — so important an interest in our State - — may be especiallj^ 

 congratulated in that the mystery that has so long enveloped 

 a large portion of the life-period of the hop-vine aphis, viz., from 

 its disappearance from the yards in the autumn to its reappear- 

 ance therein the following spring, has, during the present year, 

 been satisfactorily solved. For this gratifying achievement we are 

 indebted to the United States Department of Agriculture, through 

 the patient and laborious investigations conducted, almost uninter- 

 mittingly from May to November, by Professor Eiley and his 

 assistants, of the Entomological Division. I extract from a note 

 appended to proof-sheets of my report for 1886 (not yet published). 



