﻿30 NINTH ANNUAL REPORT 



The following passage from a letter received from Mr. Jos. T. Lit- 

 tle, of Dixon, Ills., in 1869, gives a very good account of the working 

 of the insect : 



I tind them on one clump of pines on my lawn, and in a small lot of pines in my 

 nursery. Late last Fall, I discovered that those same trees had been attacked by some 

 worm or other, and that the i'oWage had been stripped off the young shoots, which 

 shoots dried up this Summer. We had a very hard freeze on the night of October 8th, 

 the mercury being at 30 degrees above zero ; but still the worms do not seem to be 

 affected by the weather. They are very si uggish at anytime in their movements. I 

 have Scotch and Austrian Pine, Arbor Vitje, Balsam Fir, Norway, Spruce and Ked 

 Cedar, in the immediate vicinity of the White Pines, but they are unmolested. 



In 1872 Mr. A. W. Barber of Lancaster, Wis., lost some fine trees 

 by its injuries, and it was complained of in many sections the past 

 year. This worm, which is dingy white in color, with black head and 

 black spots (Fig. 11, 4 4-4) has, in every instance that has come to my 

 knowledge done its principal injury late in the Fall, and may frequently 

 be seen feeding into November, or after the ground is frozen about an 

 inch deep. When full-fed, these larva? enclose themselves in oval, 

 bright bronze, or gold-colored cocoons, spun up between the needles, 

 or in whatever sheltered situation is at hand. Sometimes the cocoon 

 is formed upon the tree, but more often among the fallen needles and 

 other debris and shelter beneath it. Within these cocoons the worm 

 is very tightly packed, and remains till toward the following Spring, 

 or even late Summer, when it becomes a pupa, with a dusky dorsal 

 line and pale brown eyes (Fig. 11, ^^ ^). The flies issue two weeks 

 afterwards, and the sexes differ so much that they would be declared 

 distinct insects by the uninitiated. The male, with the exception of 

 the underside and tip of the abdomen, is jet black, his average length 

 0.23 inch, and the expanse of his wings, 0.47 inch. The female meas- 

 ures 0.30 inch, and expands 0.65 inch. She is of a honey-yellow, with 

 the head and thorax somewhat darker than the abdomen; the thorax 

 blackish at the upper posterior sides, and the abdomen having a 

 lighter lateral stripe, with four or five blackish spots above it. These 

 distinguishing features are much more striking in the living, than in 

 the dried cabinet specimens. The antenna? in both sexes are black, 

 those of the male 21-jointed and with 17 long and 17 shorter plume- 

 like branches: those of the female serrated, with one or two joints 

 less than the male, and 17 serrations.* 



*Fitch, in the hrief and sumniiiry accoimt given of L Abbolii, says that the antennnp are 17- 

 jointed; \vliile aiKither s|)ecies, wliich lie named L. Lecontei, and which he supposed was Ihc i)aient of 

 wonns, the di>cri|iti()n of whi'li answers ]ieireclly to the al)ove, he says, has '21-jointed antenna'. I }i!ivc 

 exan»ine(l dozens of L. Abbolii, and the antennae are usually 'il-jointed in the rf , and l'.»-joiiited in the 

 9, counting the scape or bulbus as 2, and the terminal enlargement as 2.. In reality, iiowevei-, the 

 • terminal joint frequently appears single, and the number of Joints is found to vary in dilVerent individ- 

 uals in the same species, wlien large nniterial is examined. In Abbolii I have indivi(iuals with antennae 

 having IS, 19, 20 a'-d 21 joints respectively; in Abiefis the number varies from 21 to 33 in (f , and from 

 14 to 18 in 9, and in LrC'o^/c; t Ik y are usually 21 in cf and 19 in <j— always counting the sea] o as 2. 



Abbotii and LeCuntci cannot, therefore," be distinguished by the joints in their antemia;, as, with 

 others, I myself once believed they could, and the relative number otaiilennal ioints in this genus loses 

 all specific value. 



