﻿12 



NINTH ANNUAL REPORT 



[Fig. G.] 



Mr. Saunders has given some reason to believe that a few of the 

 second brood of ]arv?e may exceptionally hibernate as such.* This 

 in itself is not impossible, but cannot, by any means, be looked upon 

 as proved. The impression rests on the fact that on the 31st of May, 



1869, he found a cocoon attached to a 

 bag which he had tied on a gooseberry 

 bush on the 22i of the same month. We 

 all know that the Gooseberry is one of 

 the first plants to blossom and leaf, and 

 that in all ordinary seasons a worm such 

 as our Currant-worm would have ample 

 time to acquire full growth by the last 

 of May at London, Ont. In point of 

 fact Mr. Saunders himself found worms 

 feeding the very next year in the very 

 same locality, as early as the 10th of 

 May.f Yet he could not suppose these 

 had hibernated because he at the same 



Imported Currant Worm : — a, male; b, 

 femalefly, the hair lines showing nat. size, time fouod eggS UpOU the leaveS, SOme 



of which must have been laid two weeks earlier. The flies are known 

 to issue in April even in Northwestern New York, where, though on 

 about the same latitude, the opening of spring is later than at Lon- 

 don, Ont. Moreover, in the very first article appearing upon the 

 insect in this country (Rural New Yorker, June 2f, 185S), the worms 

 are described as appearing "in succession occasionally from March 

 till October, but in greatest numbers in June." And, allowing the 

 spring of 1869 to be unusually late, I caniiDt see why a cocoon found 

 the last day of May should not have been made by a worm hatched 

 from an egg deposited by an early developed fly ; for it is more likely 

 that an early female should deposit a few eggs on the yet unfolded 

 buds than that the worm should, as such, weather the winter's severity 

 except when shielded by its cocoon, 



" From the drawings of the male and female;]: fly given herewith 

 (Fig. 6), the reader will see at once that the two sexes differ very 

 widely. This is very generally the case among the Saw-flies, and it is- 

 a remarkable and most suggestive fact that, when this takes place, the 

 body of the male is almost invariably darker than that of the female. 

 Nor does our species, as will be observed at the first glance, form any 

 exception to the rule." Indeed, as with several other species and 



•Can. Ent., II, pp. 16, 48. 



ilhid, p. 112. 



$The abdomen in this cut should show only 9 joints. 



