836 FIFTH REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



where the dead or partially dead spruces abounded; but individual 

 worms could be obtained by beating any spruce or fir in any locality, 

 showing that in years of immunity from its attacks the insect is a wide- 

 spread and at times common species. We found the worms most abundant 

 in spruces, firs, and even hemlocks, July 1 and 2, between Phillips and 

 Rangeley, but after passing through all the Rangeley Lakes, and going 

 from Errol, !N^. H., to Berlin, Gorham, Jackson, and Conway, N. H., we 

 found that the spruces and firs throughout Northwestern Maine and the 

 White Mountain regions had suffered no widespread damage. One and 

 perhaps two rather extensive tracts of dead spruces ^\lere observed at 

 a distance from the stage road near Rangeley, but throughout the vast 

 spruce-clad forests observable from the lakes themselves no such tracts 

 of dead trees were to be seen. On the contrary, the spruce forests of 

 the Rangeley Lake region appeared to be as green and fresh as any 

 forest we have ever seen. The dead spruces at the water's edge of the 

 middle lakes were evidently due to the high water held in by the 

 middle and lower dams during the last two years. As in any forest, 

 there were individual dead trees, sometimes small clumps of them, 

 where the trees had died as the results of tornadoes or of borers. The 

 persons living by the lakes, lumbermen and others, informed us that 

 there had been no extensive destruction of evergreen trees in this 

 region. 



The spruce-bud worm attains its full size and stops feeding, ready to 

 transform to a chrysalis, in Cumberland County, by the 20th to 30th of 

 June, and about the Rangeley Lakes and in the White Mountain region 

 a few days or nearly a week later. 



When about to change to a pupa it remains in its rude shelter or 

 hiding place under the loosened leaves of the shoot, where it turns to 

 a chrysalis, without spinning a regular, even, thin cocoon. It remains 

 in the chrysalis state about six days. Those pupating at Brunswick, 

 Me., June 28 and 29, issued as moths July 4 and 5. When the moth is 

 ready to break forth from the pupa, the latter wriggles part way out of 

 its hiding place, and the moth issues, leaving the rent pupa skin pro- 

 jecting half way out of the end of the shoot. The moths then appear 

 from the first to the middle of July. July 16, after our return from an 

 absence of two weeks, we found that the moths of both sexes had issued 

 and that the females had laid their eggs in curious little patches on the 

 sides of the breeding-box. They must have issued about the 5th to 7th 

 of July, and immediately laid their eggs, as in one patch the shells were 

 empty, with a small orifice in the shell, out of which the larvie had crept. 

 Another patch was found with a dark spot in each egg showing the 

 head of the embryo caterpillar; these hatched July 18, 19. It thus ap- 

 pears that the embryo develops, and the caterpillar hatches, in about 

 ten days after the eggs are laid. 



The eggs are very curious and very unlike those of most moths. They 

 are pale green, scale-like, broad, flat beneath, moderately convex above^ 



