INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE LARCH OR TAMARACK. 255 
6. THE FIR LOPHYRUS? 
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 from Mr. Bb. M. Watson, proprietor of the Old Colony 
Nurseries, Plymouth, Mass., written under date of July 5, 1877, will give 
the facts in the case: 
IT have a large plantation of Scotch larches, twenty-five years old, forty to fifty feet: 
high, many hundred trees, which is attacked by a caterpillar (enclosed) which I do not 
find in Harris, or any forestry book 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. 
The use of a fluid preparation of Paris green or London purple 
thrown over the trees by a garden pump or modern machine for such 
purpose, figured in the Reports and Bulletins of this Commission, would 
so reduce the numbers of these caterpillars that a second year the trees 
would leave out again and not show much marks of injury. The Lo- 
phyrus sawflies are sporadic and periodical in their attacks; though 
occasionally doing great and widespread injury. 
7. THE LARCH APHIS. 
Lachnus laricifee Fitch. 
Order HeEMIPTERA; family APHID. 
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 on each side of the middle are three black punctures, the short tuber- 
eles 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 antenn pale with black tips. (Fitch.) 
Many of these lice were noticed on a particular tree the latter part of 
May, but no winged ones v +1re 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 antennze 
similarly colored to those of the parent but more pale. (Fitch.) 
8. THE LARCH CHERMES. 
Chermes laricifoliw Fitch. 
Order HEmMIPTERA; family APHID®. 
Solitary and stationary upon the leaves, extracting their juices, small black shining 
flies 0.10 long, haying the abdomen dark green, the legs obscure whitish, the wings 
nearly hyaline with pale brown veins, and the large stigma-spot upon their outer mar- 
gin beyond the middle more opaque and pale green. 
This is closely like the pine Chermes, but has the wings more clear, 
and differs also in some of the details of its colors. (Fitch.) 
