42 



though there is still a possibility' that it may prove to be identical with 

 some Trypeta found in the Old World.* 



The larva (fig. 2a) is of a greenish-white color, 0.15 — 0.20 inch long and 

 about four and one-half times as long as wide, cylindrical behind, with the 

 tail-end squarely docked, tapering in front from the middle of the body to the 

 head. Head pointed, but narrowly excavated (emarginate) in front; its 

 inferior surface with two slender, bluntish, coal-black hooks projecting in 

 front, when the mouth is protruded", at the base of which there is a smaller 

 pair connected with the base of the others, like the antlers on a buck's horn. 

 At the base of the first segment behind the head, a dorso-lateral, transverse, 

 pale-brown, flattishj rough tubercle. Last segment below, with two pale- 

 brown, horn}^ rough tubercles, each composed of three minute thorns longi- 

 tudinally arranged; and above, with two whitish, retractile ones, each pair of 

 tubercles transversely arranged. 



The pupariuai scarcely differs from the larva, except in being of a pale 

 yellowish-brown color, and contracted in length, so as to approximate to 

 an oval form and be only two and one-half instead of four and one-half times 

 as long as wide. 



INSECTS INFESTING THE APPLE.— On the Leaf. 

 CHAPTER VIT. — The Rascal Leaf-crtjmpler. {Phycita nebiilo, Walsh.) 



I figured and described this small moth, and the curious house 

 in which its larva lives, for the first time in the Prairie Farmer for 

 May, 1860, (p. 308) and the description was subsequently reprinted 

 in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, (Vol. 

 IX. pp. 312 — 3.) It infests in the northern part of Illinois both apple, 

 crab and plum trees, the larva traveling about in a little crooked horn 

 or case, and tying together with silken threads the terminal leaves of 

 young twigs, inside which it feeds at its leisure. Frequently, in pass- 

 ing from twig to twig, it anchors its case by strong silken cables to 

 the naked side of a limb, and in this situation it has very much the 

 appearance of a piece of dry bird's dung. It remains in this case in 

 the larva state all through the winter and until the forepart of the 

 following June; shortly after whicli date it changes into the pupa 

 state, from which the winged moth emerges about the middle of July. 

 I formerly conjectured that there were two or more broods of this 

 species every year, but I am satisfied now that there is but one. It 

 is not preyed on by any Ichneumon fly, so far as I have discovered; 

 but I have bred from it a species of the parasitic Tachina family, so 

 closely resembling, botli in size and coloration, the common House-fly, 

 that almost any ordinary observer would be sure to mistake the one 

 for the other. 



*Loew has since informed Osten-Sacken that "Tryp. pomonella is a new 

 species, and not identical with any European species." 



