2i8 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [September, 



the "blood-thirsty wretches" ate in the back of her new dress. 

 It wasn't blood they were after, but starch; but that was no con- 

 solation to the owner of the dress. They are nevertheless canni- 

 bals of the deepest dye, as every foot of sidewalk will attest. 

 They are being constantly crushed under foot of passers by and 

 around each luckless one a cluster of Ijve ones gather, heads in 

 center and tails radiating like the points of a star, each busy 

 eating his fill of the remains. 



Surrounded as we are, except on the lake side, by a great pine 

 region, this outbreak is interesting and well worthy of a more ex- 

 tended study, especially its effect upon insects usually found upon 

 flowers and the lower growths of vegetation. 



Newspaper Entomology. — Queer stories are found in the newspapers 

 from time to time, and none more strange than those on entomological 

 subjects. Often people are made responsible for statements they never 

 made, and yet more often the facts actually stated are beyond recognition 

 when they are published. Thus it has happened that I have become, 

 somehow, authority for the statement that all the dying back of twigs and 

 branches of fruit trees was caused by the " Locusts," whereas my only 

 statements on the subject have always been that the slits made by the 

 Cicada in ovipositing would cause a dying back of small twigs and 

 branches to the point of injury. I was far from attributing all dying back 

 to the same cause. As a matter of fact fruit trees have suffered severely 

 from several causes, among which the Cicada injury has been hardly con- 

 spicuous, except in a few localities. The "blight," that peculiar disease 

 which is so baffling to Mycologists, has been frightfully abundant, and is 

 responsible for most of the injury. The apple tree borer, Amphicerus 

 bicaudatus, has done injury in many localities, while in others the longi- 

 corn, Eupogordus tomentosus, is responsible. 



In the Philadelphia papers for July 25th, Dr. J. Cheston Morris is credited 

 with a paper read before the Academy of Natural Sciences in which the 

 trouble is all charged to " a newly discovered pest, the ScoHfus pyri.'' It 

 would be unfair to judge the doctor's paper by the newsppper abstract; 

 but a more misleading account could scarcely be given of the actual con- 

 dition of affairs. While I cannot of course assert that Xyleborus pyri is 

 not responsible for some of the injury in New Jersey as well as in Penn- 

 sylvania, yet it is certain that it is only a very small percentage that can 

 be so infested; only three or four trees having come under my notice out 

 of thousands of cases examined by me. The description of the larva as 

 a grub with a black hard head, three pairs of black feet and " seven or 

 eight projections of false feet"»is peculiarly excellent. The worst feature 

 of the case is that the article is making the rounds of the rural and agri- 

 cultural press, and will be credited by hundreds of farmers who will add 

 to it their already large stock of misinformation. — J. B. S. 



