112 



THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Hickory ( Carya glabra). So far as I can find out, no galls 

 have hitherto been described by authors as made by Bark- 

 lice, neither indeed had any true galls beon described as 

 made by species of the PayUa family, till Baron Osten 

 Sacken and myself discovered such on the Hackberry ; 

 but any Entomologist, by examining either of the above, 

 may easily satisfy himself that the mother-louse inhabit- 

 ing them does not belong to the Aphis but to the Coccus 

 Family. Moreover, from the point in the process refer- 

 red to above, the habits of the denizens of all the above 

 three galls differ widely from those of the true gall-ma- 

 king Plant-lice. All these last, as their families increase 

 inside the gall which they inhabit, secrete in common 

 with their young larvje a large quantity of sugary dust; 

 while none of my three gall-making Barklice secrete any- 

 thing of the kind. Again, all Plantlice whether they 

 make galls or not, bring forth their young alive all through 

 the summer and never lay eggs till the autumn; while 

 all my three gall-making Barklice lay eggs during the 

 month of July inside the gall, which do not hatch out till 

 after the expiration of several weeks. It is further re- 

 markable that, in all these galls made by Barklice, two, 

 three, or even four mother-lice are often found in a single 

 gall, along with numerous eggs or young larvcc or some 

 eggs and some larvae ; whereas I do not remember ever to 

 have found more than a single mother-louse in any single 

 gall known to be produced by a Plant-louse. Hence it 

 follows that several Barklice must sometimes cooperate 

 in making a gall and inhabit it afterwards as joint ten- 

 ants. Moreover all these young Barklice stray away 

 from the gall shortly after they are hatched, leaving their 

 mothers behind them; while young Plantlice that inha- 

 bit galls stay there, "along with their mothers, till they 

 are full-grown and have acquired wings. My investiga- 

 tion of the Natural History of these insects is not yet 

 completed ; so that I cannot say what becomes of them 

 in the winter. 



I have seen dozens of wild grape-vines and two or three 

 cultivated ones infested by these galls; but in no case 

 were the galls sufficiently abundant to do material injury 

 to the vine. Of course, considering that each louse lays 

 about fifty eggs on a rough calculation, the breed, if no- 

 thing checked it, would soon increase till it destroyed the 

 whole vine. But something does check it, and most effi- 

 ciently too. There is a minute two-%vinged Fly about 1-lG 

 inch long belonging to the great JV/wsca family, the larva 

 of which attacks these barklice in the most savage man- 

 ner, insomuch that in the latter partof July nineteen out 

 of every twenty galls contain either its orange-color- 

 ed larva or its brown pupa-case, surrounded by the deso- 

 late ruins of what was once a quiet happy family of lice, 

 enugly secluded from the world within the green walls of 

 their own private domestic cell. It is the great law of 

 Nature, practically carried out from one end of the Crea- 

 tion to the other^''Kill and be killed, eat and be eaten." 

 Hence I do not think that there is much likelihood of 

 these galls ever becoming so numerous on any vine, as to 

 check its growth unduly. And probably, occurring as 

 they chiefly do towards the tips of rampant shoots, they 

 may even be beneficial in certain cases by operating as a 

 summer pruning. 



Let me beg of you in conclusion, Mr. Daggy, when you 

 Bend specimens for the future, to enclose them as fresh 

 as possible in a box of some kind. Botanists like their 

 specimens dried up and pressed as flat as a pancake, but 

 Entomologists do not. If I had not been quite familiar 

 with your galls, and if 1 had not known that they occur- 

 red on the same cultivated variety of Grape on which you 

 found them, I should not have been able to make head 

 or tail of them from what you sent. 



W. H. S., Bloomingtou, 111. — The galls on the leaves of 

 the Clinton grape-vine are precisely the same as those 

 received from E. Daggy, of Tuscola, 111; and for an ac- 

 count of them, I must refer you to the answer to that gen- 

 tleman in this number of the Pn.^cTiCAL Entomologist. 

 Several years ago I received the same gall from your 

 town, unless my memory f;tils me. I see also from the 

 Prairie Farmer (Aug. 4, ISIiG), that Mr. Riley has receiv- 

 ed it from Dement. 111., and although he noticed the eggs 

 in company with the niuther-louse, yet, misled very ex- 

 cusably by the authority of Dr. Fitch, he pronounces the 

 gall to be the work of a Plant-louse and not of a Bark- 

 louse. Dr. Fitch indeed is sometimes a little too rash, 

 nut only in fi.xing the family to which a particular larva 

 belongs, but in deciding even on the very genus to whick 



it belongs, without being acquainted with the winged in- 

 sect. For example, he refers the plant-louse of a cock's- 

 comb like gall (»/mVco/a Fitch) on the leaf of a species of 

 elm to the genus Bt/rsocrypta. I showed long ago that it 

 belongs to the genus Thclaxes. Again, he refers the plant- 

 louse of a gall on the leaf-stalk of the Shellbark Hickory 

 (his carycccaulis) to the genus Pemphigus. Both Baron Os- 

 ten Sacken and myself are now acquainted with the 

 winged insect, and it belongs to the genus Phylloxera, or 

 rather perhaps to the American representative of that 

 genus. 



The irregular bunches or enlargements of the tendril, 

 and occasionallyjof the leaf-stalk, of an imported German 

 grape-vine, to some five or six time its natural diameter — 

 in the latter case of the natural green color, in the form- 

 er case strongly tinged with lake-red — are also galls made 

 by another species of Bark-louse. This gall, however, is 

 quite new to me, and as far as I know is undescribed. To 

 me it is a peculiarly interesting one. The mother-louse 

 here is of the same deep yellow color as in the other gall, 

 and of the same almost globular shape; and it only dif- 

 fers in being 4 smaller — its diameter being two instead of 

 M;-fe-hundredths of an inch. Several of them occur in a 

 single gall, accompanied by their oval yellowish eggs, as 

 in the other gall, but I did not notice any young larvsB 

 hatched out. When ripe, this gall bursts open laterally 

 in a large ragged mouth; but I opened some that had not 

 yet burst, and they contained the same mother-louse and 

 the same eggs. This louse appears to be also largely in- 

 fested by the same deep yellow cannibal larvae as that of 

 Dr. Fitch's gall ; but possibly these may have strayed 

 from one gall to the other. For unfortunately you did 

 not take the very necessary precaution to wrap up each 

 set of specimens by itself. The genus to which both these 

 two species of Bark-lice belong cannot be satisfactorily 

 determined, till the winged male has been bred. The fe- 

 males in this family never acquire any wings at all. 



As to getting rid of these galls, the obvious method, of 

 course, is to cut them ofl' and throw them away or other- 

 wise destroy them, any time before the lice leave them. 

 But I doubt much whether, in consequence of the dili- 

 gence of the cannibal larvse which swarmed in your spe- 

 cimens, they are likely to prove materially injurious. 

 Certainly the viiifolice gall, at all events, is not, as you in- 

 fer, caused by the vine growing in the shade; for I know 

 a wild grape-vine growing in a fence-corner, with not a 

 tree near it, which is covered with this gall. 



What you take for "a partially open cocoon" on a leaf 

 from the Isabella grape-vine is not a cocoon at all, but 

 the dead and shrunken body of a sixteen-footed caterpil- 

 lar about 3 inch long, which would otherwise have chang- 

 ed to some small moth. As is very commonly the case, 

 it has been destroyed by the larvte of some parasitic Chal- 

 cis fly, which have eaten up its vitals; and, as usual in 

 such cases, it has adhered strongly in death to the leaf on 

 which it breathed its last, the parasites spinning a mass 

 of flossy silk under its carcase, within which some of them 

 have already changed into the pupa state. In the course 

 of probably two or three weeks, they will come out in the 

 form of four-winged flies J inch long, either of a black or 

 metallic green color, with glassy wings. The species and 

 genus cannot be determined from the larva and pupa. 

 Of course this so-called cocoon has nothing whatever to 

 do with the Bark-louse galls, as you say that one of your 

 grape-growers fancied to be the case. One might as well 

 infer that all the Lager-beer saloons in Bloomington were 

 caused by the bodies of certain beef-cattle lying dead in 

 your slaughter-houses. 



Since the above was in type, I have bred (August 17) 

 five specimens of the Chalcis flies from your so-called co- 

 coon. They belong to a very beautiful species, which ia 

 quite new to me and is apparently undescribed. 



Wm. J. Lawrence, Ohio. — The clay-yellow beetle near- 

 ly an inch long with six black spots on its back, which 

 you find to infest your grape-vines, \b Pelidnofa punctata'- — 

 a notorious ofl'ender in this respect. The small clay-yel- 

 low beetle about three-sixtcentha inch lon^, but without 

 any spots, is the Cola.ijiis flavida of Say. You say that 

 you "first noticed it on the Grape vines, about July 10th, 

 and they soon increased to such numbers as to literally 

 devour all the more tender leaves and young shoots, be- 

 ing worst on young vines." This is the first instance on 

 record, so far as I know, of this species being injurious. 

 It is common in the woods near Rock Island, Illinois, 

 and I bred a specimen iu 1861 from a pupa found under- 



