﻿OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Elder leaves boiled until the liquid becomes black. Into this is then 

 mixed an equal quantity of tobacco water. Fox-glove leaves are also 

 used for the same purpose. Sulphide of potassium in dilute solution 

 (one part in 500) is also used in France, and even air-slacked lime is 

 found useful when the worms are young. The same remedies would 

 doubtless apply to our species, but white hellebore, as I shall presently 

 recommend it for the other worms, is most available and most effective, 

 though less satisfactory than when applied to them. The habit which 

 the worms have of letting themselves down by a web when disturbed, 

 renders hand picking quite effectual if done when they are young. 

 It will be most effectual where the bushes are well-trimmed. By 

 shaking these with a forked stick, and then passing the stick under 

 the suspended worms, the latter may be drawn onto the ground and 

 crushed. It is a good plan also to dir around the bushes, after the 

 worms have entered the ground to transform, so as to expose them or 

 the chrysalides to birds. Where practicable, poultry may be used to 

 good advantage in this destruction. 



Three other Span-worms* are mentioned by Packard and Saund- 

 ers as infesting currant bushes; but noae of them are spotted and 

 marked as that under consideration, and none of them have ever been 

 known to multiply to the same injurious degree. They all occur in 

 Missouri, and the moths are more often met with than the worms. 



THE IMPORTED CJJRR^NT WORK— mmatus ventricosus\ Klug. 

 [Ord. Hymenoptera ; Fam. Tenthredinid^]. 

 The two insects next to be treated of belong to a class of leaf- 

 feeding worms not heretofore noticed in my Reports, namely, the false 

 caterpillars or slugs. With the exception of the wood-boring Horn- 

 tails (Uroceridce), B,nd a few of the Gall-flies {C(/nipldce), they are 

 the only insects of their order that injure vegetation to any 

 considerable extent. The false-caterpillars are so named on 

 account of their general resemblance to the ordinary caterpillars 



*Angerona crocataria (Fabr.), Amphydasis cognataria Guen., and Endropia armataria (H — S.) • 



tAs with so many other insects, this species has received many names, and tlirough tlie careless- 

 ness of describers, anil the tendency to erect species on the most trivial diflerences, it has become 

 almost impossible to unravel its nomenchiture. Mr. Walsh has, however, endeavored to do so (Pract. 

 Ent. I. l'2j) . The name wiiich I employ, and which has been very generally accepted, was given to it 

 in 1819 by King ; but as, according to Seibold, King's name was what we call a mere museum name, 

 and Scopoli had described the <f as early as 17(!3 (Entomologia carniolica, 280) by the name of ribesii, 

 the sticklers who allow nothing but the strictest law of i)riority, carried back to its utmost limit in 

 point of time, will have a chance to fly in the face of modern authors who have employed King's 

 name, by adopting Scopoli's, albeit his ribesii was a description of but one sex and not of the species. 

 In 18 J3 the cf was described as affinis and the ? as trimaculatus by St. Fai'geau ; and it is under this 

 last name that Dr. Fitch published an extended article on the species (Trans. N. Y.St. Agr. Soc. 

 18G7, pp. 909-'.)3;i)— strangely overlooking the sexual distinctions after they had been clearly pointed out 

 by Mr. Walsh. It has at ditlerent times been christened ribis by two ditl'erent authors; ulso ribesii 

 grossularice and grossulariatus. 



