854 FIFTH REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



40. The spruce-tree leaf-hopper. 



Athysanus abietis Fitch. 



Order Hemiptera; family Tettigoniid^. 



Puncturing their leaves aud extracting their juices the latter part of May and dur- 

 ing the mouth of June, an obloug black shining leaf-hopper 0.20 long, tapering pos- 

 teriorly, aud broadest across the base of the thorax, with a light-yellow head, having 

 the mouth black, and also two bauds upon the crown, the ends of which are often 

 united, and commonly with a white streak on the middle of the inner edge of the 

 wing-covers, its legs being i)ale yellowish varied more or less with black. 



"I first met with several specimens of this insect eleven years since, 

 upon the black spruce and fir balsam, on the summit of the Green 

 Mountains, in an excursion hither with that martyr of science, the late 

 Prof. C. B. Adams. Since then I have repeatedly captured this same 

 insect upon birch trees, distant from any spruces, and it is possible it 

 might have been accidentally present on these latter trees in the in- 

 stance first mentioned, there being numerous birch trees in the same 

 vicinity." (Fitch.) 



AFFECTING THE CONES. 



41. The Spruce Cone-worm.* 



Pinipestis reniculella Grote. 



This is the first occurrence, so far as we know, of a caterpillar preying 

 upon the terminal fresh young cones of the Spruce. We have pre- 

 viously! called attention to the Spruce Bud-louse [Adelges abieticolens) 

 which deforms the terminal shoots of the spruce, producing large swell- 

 ings which would be readily mistaken for the cones of the same tree. 

 Another species of Bud-louse {Adelges abietis Linn.), which appears to 

 be the same as the European insect of that name, we observed several 

 years since (August, 1881) in considerable numbers on the Norway 

 Spruces on the grounds of the Peabody Academy of Sciences at Salem. 



The species of caterpillar in question was observed, August 24, in 

 considerable numbers on a young spruce 10 to 20 feet in height at Mere- 

 point on Casco Bay, Maine. The cones on the terminal shoot as well 

 as the lateral upper branches, which when healthy and unaffected were 

 purplish green and about 1^ inches long, were for the most part mined 

 by a rather large Phycid caterpillar. The worm was of the usual shape 

 and color, especially resembling a Phycid caterpillar not uncommon in 

 certain seasons on the twigs of the Pitch Pine, on which it produces 

 large unsightly masses of castings within which the worms hide. 



* Reprinted from Bulletin U. S. Department of Agriculture, Division of Entomology, 

 No 13, 1887. 



t Guide to the Study of Insects, p. 523, and Bulletin 7, U. S. Ent. Comm., p. 234. 



