PINE INSECTS. 741 



blighted by these -weevils and commit it to the flames. With every shoot that is 

 thus treated, from ten to fifty or more of these weevils will be destroyed, which 

 otherwise will come abroad the following year to dwarf and deform a number of the 

 other trees in the same manner. No one, on casting this subject over in his mind for 

 a moment or two, will doubt but that a few hours devoted to such work, or a whole 

 day, should it be required, will be time well spent, and labor that will be amply 

 rewarded." 



To the foregoing account, copied from Fitch's Fourth Eeport, we will 

 add that we have observed the weevil in all its stages of growth at 

 Brunswick, Me., under the bark of white pine shrubs, the last of April, 

 the larvjB at this date being more numerous than the pupae or beetles. 

 Our larvfe were .32 inch long. The pupa is white, the tip of the abdo- 

 men being square, with a sharp spine on each side. It is .30 inch in 

 length. There are often to be seen in the forests of Maine trees, from 

 2 to 4 feet in diameter, variously distorted by the attacks in early life 

 of this weevil. 



70. The white pine aphis. 



Lavhims slrobi Fitch. 



Order Homoptera ; family Aphid^, 



Colonies of plant-lice on the ends of the branches, puncturing them and extracting 

 their juices, the bark of the infested trees having a peculiar black appearance ; num- 

 bers of ants in company with them, and traveling up and down the trunks of the 

 trees which they inhabit. The winged individuals 0.20 long to the tips of their 

 wings, black, hairy, and sometimes slightly dusted over with a white meal-like pow- 

 der, with a row of white spots along the middle of the abdomen, the thighs dull 

 pale-yellow at their bases, and the forewings hyaline, with black veins, of which 

 the forked one is exceedingly fine and slender. The wingless individuals far more 

 numerous, 0.12 long, brownish black with a white line along the middle of the thorax 

 and white spots along each side of the abdomen, which are sometimes faint or want- 

 ing, the antennae pale, with their tips black. 



71. The parallel spittle- insect. 



Aphrophora parallella Say. 



Order Hemiptera (Homoptera); family Cercopid^. 



In June, a spot of white froth, resembling spittle, appearing upon the bark near 

 the ends of the branches, hiding within it a small white wingless insect having six 

 legs, which punctures and sucks the fluids of the bark, and grows to about a quarter 

 of an inch in length by the last of tha*^^ month, and then becomes a pupa of a similar 

 appearance, but varied more or less with dusky or black, and with rudimentary 

 wings resembling a vest drawn closely around the middle of its body ; the latter part 

 of July changing to its perfect form, with wings fully grown, and then no longer 

 covering itself with foam, but continuing to the end of the season, puncturing and 

 drawing its nourishment from the bark as before. The perfect insect a flattened 

 oval tree-hopper, 0,40 long, with its wing-covers held in form of a roof, its color 

 brown from numberless blackish punctures upon a pale ground, a smooth whitish 

 line along the middle of its back, and a small smooth whitish spot in the center of 

 each wing-cover, its abdomen beneath rusty brown. (Fitch.) 



