40 BULLETIN 322 



some other source. J. G. Jack, writing in Garden and Forest in 1896, 

 says that the insect had been known in the Arnold Arboretum at Cam- 

 bridge, Mass., for many years. It is quite possible that this case-bearer 

 reached America earlier than 1886. It has evidently spread slowly in 

 this country. 



In 1905 Dr. James Fletcher recorded the insect at Ottawa, Canada, 

 where it was working on the European larches. He says that " the num- 

 bers of the larvae upon the trees at Ottawa in May last were not large 

 enough to have any serious effects upon either the growth or appearance 

 of the trees; but I regret to find this autumn that the small cases of the 

 larvae are enormously more abundant than they were last spring." 



Dr. C. Gordon Hewitt writes under date of March 29, 1912, that this 

 species infests both the native tamarack and the European larch in eastern 

 Canada, and that during the past two years it has been exceedingly abun- 

 dant in certain localities, especially in the provinces of New Brunswick 

 and Nova Scotia. He says, " The most serious depredations of this 

 insect which I have witnessed were in Nova Scotia where considerable 

 areas of tamarack had been attacked; the destruction and shrivelling up 

 of the foliage gave the trees a characteristic light-brown color, quite 

 distinct at a distance from the appearance produced by the defoliations 

 by the larch sawfly, Lygaeonematus erichsonii" 



Doctor Fletcher quotes an account of Rudolph Japing, Forest Assessor, 

 Muenden, Hanover, Germany, concerning this pest, in which the latter 

 says, " The injury to the trees from these insects can be very great, espe- 

 cially in the spring. The growth stops and the trees become feeble and 

 are thus susceptible to canker, which often follows the damage done by 

 the insect. The larch case-bearer is mostly found on trees from ten to 

 forty years old." 



Cecconi says that he has observed the invasion to begin generally 

 at the topmost part of the trees and to extend gradually toward 

 the base. Young trees and the most vigorous ones are preferred, while 

 the old trees and those isolated are generally spared. He calls attention 

 to the great numbers of the larvae in the larch forests of Bellino, Italy, 

 in 1904. He says that from nearly eight hundred grams of dry branches 

 (that is, withered) sent to him in May and taken from the breeding cage 

 about the end of August, he obtained more than six thousand moths. 



The insect is also becoming a pest of considerable importance in the 

 forests of the northeastern United States. Miss Patch observed the case- 

 bearers over a period of two years in Maine. She found them rather 

 widely distributed on larches in the forest, and committing serious injury. 

 She says, " Although minute, they have been present in such enormous 

 numbers that larch trees have often been, during the past three seasons, 



