THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



121 



tipped more or less with black, the surrounding parts 

 sometimes more or less tinned with dusky. The triangu- 

 lar membrane at the base of the abdomen above, whitish, 

 ifjr.s bright honey-yellow; all the coxse and trochanters 

 whitish; the extreme tip of the hind shanks and the 

 whole of the hind tarsi brown-black. Whiijs glassy; 

 veins and stigma brown-black, the latter as well as the 

 costa obscurely marked with dull honey-yellow. In a 

 single female all three submarginal cross-veins are ab- 

 sent in-one wing, and only the basal one is present in the 

 other wing. In another all three are indistinctly present 

 in one wing, and in the other only the ba.sal one and a 

 rudiment of the terminal one. In a single wing of two 

 others the terminal submarginal cross-vein is absent. 

 And in a single female there are but three submarginal 

 cells in either wing, precisely as in the genus Eimra. 

 Length 9 .22— .28 inch. Front Aving J .27— .33 inch. Ex- 

 panse of wings 9 -53 — .64 inch, (wings depressed.) 



3Iale Fly. A four-winged fly, the size of a com- 

 Eion bou.?e-fly, with glassy wings and flic body most- 

 ly black. 



Body black. Head with the clypeus and the entire 

 mouth, except the tip of the mandibles, dull honey-yel- 

 low. Antennae brown-black, often more or less tinged 

 with rufous beneath except towards the base, as long as 

 the body, the joints proportioned as in the female, but 

 the whole antenna, as usual in this sex, vertically much 

 more dilated, so that joint 3 is only 2| times as long as 

 wide when viewed in profile. Thorax with the wing- 

 scales and the entire collare honey-yellow. Cenchri whi- 

 tish. Abdomen with more or less of its sides, the ex- 

 treme tip above, and its entire inferior surface, honey- 

 yellow. Legs as in the female. Wings as in,the female. 

 In two males the middle submarginal cross-vein is absent 

 in both wings, so that if captured at large they would na- 

 turally be referred to the genus Euura. In two others 

 this is the case in one wing only. Another has but the 

 basal submarginal cross-vein remaining in each wing. 

 And in two others the terminal submarginal cross-vein is 

 absent in one wing. Length % .20 — .22 inch. Front wing 

 ^.23 — ^.25 inch. Expanse of wings % .44 — .U inch, (wings 

 depressed.) 



Described from twenty-two males and thirteen fe- 

 males, three males and one female of the spring 

 brood. As this solitary female happened to be one 

 of the two with 10-jointed antennre, I erroneou-sly 

 stated, in answer to a correspondent, that this was 

 a peculiarity of the species. It is evident now 

 that it is merely a variation, but a variation of a 

 kind of which no other example in the whole Fa- 

 mily of Sawflies is known to me, or, so far as I am 

 aware, is recorded by others. For the satisfaction 

 of the incredulous, I have donated one of these ab- 

 normal females to the Collection of the Society at 

 Philadelphia. 



I believe, on carefully comparing Stephens's de- 

 scription of the English Nematus ribcsii, which is 

 said by him to " feed on the common red currant," 

 that our American insect is the same species, al- 

 though he describes the legs as having no dark 

 markings, and although he had the incredible care- 

 lessness not to state which sex he was describing. 

 Otherwise his description agrees very well with our 

 female, after making the necessary allowances for 

 so slipslop a describer. But long before Stephens 

 wrote, our insect was described by the German en- 

 tomologist Klug, under the name of Nematus {ten- 

 thredtj] ventricosus; and this species, it is distinct- 

 ly stated, feeds both upon gooseberry and currant. 

 Our insect, also, as is expressly stated by Mr. Otis 

 Bigelow of N. Y., feeds both upon the currant and 

 upon the gooseberry; (^AniKi-ican A<jricuhurist, 

 May, 1805, p. 141 ;) but it appears that certain Eu- 

 ropean author.'*, finding this .<>ame insect upon two 



distinct plants, the gooseberry and the currant, 

 jumped to the conclusion that the insects themselves 

 were al.so necessarily distinct.* Two female speci- 

 mens that I have received from England from a 

 rather unreliable source, through the kindness of 

 Mr. Norton, labelled as the true Nematus ribesiiot 

 Stephens, differ altogether from Stephens's descrip- 

 tion and must have been so labelled by mistake. 

 Neither is it possible, from the laws of sexual color- 

 ation in this genus, that Stephens described the 

 male and not as I suppose the female of his species, 

 and that these are the true females belonging to 

 his ribe.sii. For instead of the body being lighter 

 colored than he describes it, as it ought to be if 

 these were the females of his males, it is very 

 much darker colored. At any rate these females 

 are quite distinct from the females of our species. 

 Those who desire fuller information on this subject, 

 are referred to the Appendix to this Article. 



Now for the American evidence, that this Goose- 

 beiTy Sawfly found in the East, is nut an indige- 

 nous, but an imported species. No notice whatever 

 of any such insect is to be found in the writings 

 either of Dr. Fitch or of Dr. Harris, whence we may 

 reasonably infer that, at the time when they wrote, 

 no such insect was known to infest the Garden in 

 the Eastern States. Mr. Bigelow says that it was 

 first noticed in Onondaga County, N. Y., about A. 

 D. 1862. {Ibkl) In 1864 Prof Winchell, not at 

 all suspecting that it was an imported species, named 

 and described it as occurring at Ann Arbor, Michi- 

 gan, in a newspaper Article which was reprinted 

 in Silliman's Joiirnal, (Sept. 1864, p. 291,) under 

 the specific name of ribls; but by an oversight, 

 very pardonable in one who was not a professed 

 entomologist, referred it. to the wrong genus, Scl- 

 anch-ia. Unless my memory fails me, Mr. Brackett 

 of Maine has also described this same insect, but 

 under another specific name, as occurring in the 

 Slate of Maine. FiDa% I hear from Dr. W. M- 

 Smith of N. Y. that "Mr. F. W. Collins, of Roches- 

 ter, N. Y. thinks that the Gooseberry Sawfly war 

 undoubtedly introduced at Rochester, N. Y., by 

 nurserymen in importations of bushes from Eu- 

 rope," and that he "knows that it has gradually 

 spread from Rochester, as a centre, in gradually 

 widening circles." And I learn from other sources, 

 that in that part of the State of New York it has 

 now become an awful pest. . Hence, putting all the 

 facts together, we may conclude that this Sawfly 

 was imported from Europe within the last five or 

 six years, perhaps in more than one place at once, 

 and that it is now slowly overspreading the whole 

 country. It was only the other day that I heard 

 from a correspondent in Wisconsin, that his cur- 

 rant bushes had. been attacked by a new kind of 

 worm, that none of the neighbors had ever seen or 

 heard of before. I may add here that Onondaga 

 County, where both Dr. Smith and Mr. Bigelow 

 reside, lies some 70 or 80 miles to the east of Ro- 

 chester, and that Rochester is celebrated all over 



"Kirby and Spence speak of " the Sawfly of the cur- 

 rant and gooseberry" as one and the same species. (Kby. 

 and Pp. Jntrod. Letter 6.) 



