902 I'IFTH REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



27. The fir lophyrus. 

 Lophyrus abietis Harris. 



A Lophyrus-like false caterpillar, which may have been the larva of 

 Lophyrus abietis, in 1877 attacked a plantation of Scotch larches. The 

 following letter, written by Mr. B. M. Watson, proprietor of the Old 

 Colony Nurseries, Plymouth, Mass., under date of July 5, 1877, will 

 give the facts in the case: 



I have a large plantation of Scotch larches, twenty-five years old, 40 to 50 feet 

 high, many hundred trees, which is attacked by a caterpillar (inclosed) which I 

 have at hand. Do you know it or its remedy ? The trees are much riddled by them, 

 and the foliage more than two-thirds destroyed. The trees look bare and unsightly. 

 We have had them several years. They began at one end and have advanced to one- 

 fifth of the plantation ; the other four-fifths are not infested. 



I have also observed the young at the end of August, at Brunswick, Maine, both 

 on the fir and larch. 



The use of a fluid preparation of Paris green or London purple thrown 

 over the trees by a garden pump or modern spraying machine, figured 

 in the Introduction to this Report, would so reduce the number of these 

 caterpillars that a second year the trees would leave out again and not 

 show much marks of injury. The Lophyrus sawflies are sporadic and 

 periodical in their attacks, though occasionally doing great and wide- 

 spread injury. 



28. The larch aphis. 

 Lachnus laricifex Fitch. 



Order Hemiptera ; family APHiDiE. 



Solitary upon the small twigs, stationed in the axils of the tufts of leaves, with its 

 beak sucking the juices that should go to the leaves, a wingless brown plant-louse 

 slightly tinged with coppery, 0.12 long, with a dull white line along the middle of its 

 back and a similar whitish band at the sutures of each of the abdominal segments, 

 in which bands ou each side of the middle are three black punctures, the short tuber- 

 cles on each side of the tip deep black, the under side dull white and dusted with 

 white powder, the legs pale with the feet and knees black and also the apical half of 

 the hind thighs and shanks, and the antennae pale with black tips. (Fitch.) 



Many of these lice were noticed on a particular tree the latter part of 

 May, but no winged ones were to be found. Ants, as usual, were guard- 

 ing them and drinking the honey dew which they ejected. Many of 

 them were accompanied with four or more young, huddled close around 

 the base of the sheath from which the leaves arise. These were scarcely 

 half the length of the parent, of a light dull yellow color with two brown 

 spots above on the base of the abdomen, the legs and antennae similarly 

 colored to those of the parent but more pale. (Fitch.) 



Scattered individuals were observed at Brunswick, Me., in August. 



