6o4 



Garden and Forest. 



[December i8, iS 



Monaco — brings us to La Mortola, a small village in the midst 

 of Olive-groves. Here Palazzo Orengo, the residence of Mr. T. 

 Hanbury, is finely situated, and is surrounded by a beautiful 

 garden containing an extraordinary collection of plants. Just 

 twenty-two years ago its present owner found it covered with 

 Olive and Lemon-trees, some of which still remain ; the area 

 of the garden is about fifty acres, and there is a difference of 

 level of considerably more than six hundred feet between the 

 lower portion and the highest part. Some fifteen years ago a 

 couple of illustrations, representing views in the gardens of 

 JMr. Hanbury, appeared in the Gardeners' Chronicle, but these 

 fail altogether to do justice to the exquisite beauty of the place 

 and its surroundings ; the letter-press, however, accompany- 

 ing the illustrations in question, recalls vividly to my mind the 

 impressions received at La Mortola. A few sentences cover- 

 ing some of the points I find recorded in my note-book. I 

 herewith copyfrom the Gardeners' C/ironic/eior ]u\y nth, 1874: 

 "Our business lies not so much with the village as with tfie 

 grounds round the Palazzo Orengo, now occupied by Mr. 

 Thomas Hanbury. Placed in a situadon vei-y smiilar in char- 

 acter to the projecting cape on which Monaco is situate, and 

 almost equally lovely in its surroundings, this garden is one 

 of the most interesting, from the richness and variety of its 

 contents, that can be seen in any country. It occupies the 

 slope of a hill trending toward the sea, is protected in part by 

 the mountains which rise behind it, but must be exposed to 

 certain winds which rush from the north down a deep gorge 

 on the western side of the garden. This gorge, from the side 

 of which our illustration is taken, descends from the top of 

 the mountains to the sea, and its sides are planted with Olives 

 and Pines. This ravine adds greatly to the picturesqueness of 

 the garden, and, together with tlie rocks in its vicinity, fur- 

 nishes a perfect treasure-house of wild plants. Fancy the 

 delight of gathering Wild Myrtle with one's own hand, and 

 Wild Oleander, and yet in Europe ! Coriaria myrtifolia is 

 also a characteristic plant, and so is the pretty Sniilax aspera, 

 whose spotted leaves and zigzag clusters of pink berries are 

 of a very ornamental character. Lavender, Rosemary and 

 Thyme grow abundantly on the rocks. Convolvulus althcEoides 

 is one of their greatest ornaments. The Caper flourishes on the 

 walls. A species of Moricandia comes up everywhere in the 

 neighborhood as a weed, but is one of those plants whose dis- 

 tribution is entirely confined to a narrow area on this coast, it 

 not being found elsewhere. A species of Asparagus (^. acicti- 

 folius) is by no means inelegant ; Daphne Gnidium grows 

 here in some profusion ; the Alaternus, so familiar to us at 

 home, fruits abundantly ; Globularias abound on the rocks ; 

 Euphorbias are very characteristic, in particular a little spiny 

 species, E. sphiosa, and a really grand shrubby species, E. 

 dendroides, which forms large bushes, not only under the 

 Olives, but also springing from the clefts of the rock close to 

 the sea, where little else will grow. An admirable selection 

 from these native plants — admirable not only from the judg- 

 ment with which they have been selected, but also for the 

 faithfulness with which they have been represented, and the 

 interest that has been thrown around them — is given in (the 

 late) Mr. J. Traherne Moggridge's " Flora of Mentone." An 

 account of some of the more remarkable exotic plants in Mr. 

 Hanbury's garden will be given in my next series of notes. 

 Kew. George Nicholson. 



Entomological. 



A Tulip Tree Leaf Destroyer. 



{^Cecidomyia liriodendri.) 



T N the Monograph of the Diptera of North America, Part I, 

 ■'■ (1862), p. 202, Baron R. Osten-Sacken gives the following 

 brief account of the insect to which this notice and the accom- 

 panying illustration (see page 605) refers. 



" Cecidoinyia liriodendri, n. sp., Brown spots with yellow or 

 greenish aureole on the leaves of the Tulip tree {Liriodendron 

 Tulipifera). These spots, about two-tenths or three-tenths of 

 an inch in diameter, indicate the presence, inside of the leaf, 

 of a leaf-mining larva of Cecidomyia. It is about one line 

 long, orange, the exserted portion of the breast bone is trun- 

 cated heart shaped*; the tip of the body has two short, horny 

 points, directed upward. (Similar spots on the same tree are 

 produced by a lepidopterous larva.)" 



No further observation is made. Baron Osten-Sacken had 

 evidently not seen the imago, and I have not been able to find 

 any other record or account of the insect or its injuries. Dur- 

 ing the past two years, at least, the beauty of the foliage of 

 many large Tulip trees about Boston has been destroyed by 



the work of these little leaf-miners, or, more properly, spot- 

 makers, belonging to the large genus Cecidomyia, which includes 

 the destructive Hessian ffy. Many people who have always 

 counted upon their Tulip-trees as belonging to one of the few 

 species free from serious insect-attacks, have, by midsum- 

 mer, been disgusted to find the leaves filled with large brown 

 and yellow blotches. In some instances the foliage, by the 

 end of August, has become so brown and twisted from the 

 effects of numerous spots in every leaf that it has had the ap- 

 pearance of having been scorched by fire, and many of the 

 leaves having thus become dead and dry fall to the ground. 



There are several (three or more) broods of the insect dur- 

 ing the season, and the broods so overlap each other that 

 some larvae may almost always be found. The first eggs are 

 probably laid on the young leaves as they unfold in the 

 spring, and the last lot of larvee reach full growth about the 

 end of September, when they make a slit on the under side at 

 the edge of their mine, and escape to the ground to pupate 

 and remain through the winter. The pupa skin is very thin 

 and transparent. The species of Cecidomyia are so numerous, 

 and so similar in most of their characters, that it is generally 

 not easy to identify the flies without a knowledge of their early 

 stages and habits. In the present case the body of the small, 

 delicate fly is light brown in color and sparingly covered with 

 hair. The length of the female is about eight-hundredths of 

 an inch (two m. m.), and of the male considerably less. The 

 head is black ; the antennae are dark brown and in the female 

 apparently thirteen-jointed. The joints of the antennae of the 

 female are on short pedicels, and they are cylindrical and of 

 even length. The basal joint is thicker and much shorter 

 than the others. Each joint has a whorl of hairs around it 

 near the base, and a few near the other end, and some of the 

 basal hairs are longer than the joint. 



The antennas of the male are much longer and apparently 

 twenty-four-jointed, with two additional very short and indis- 

 tinct joints at the base. The pedicels between the joints are 

 long ; the joints are simple, short, and bulb-like, every alternate 

 joint being slightly smaller; and the connecting pedicel is 

 somewhat thicker and shorter than the next, which is slen- 

 der and cylindrical. Each joint is provided with a whorl 

 of very long hairs, thus giving the male antennae a feathered 

 appearance. 



The legs are long, with femora and tibiae of equal length, 

 and tarsi much longer. They are banded by light yellow and 

 brown, and are dark or black at the joints. 



Like most of the genus, the surface and margins of the 

 wings of this species are hairy, the hairs being longer and 

 more numerous toward the base. The wings of the largest 

 specimens (females) expand about two-tenths of an inch (five 

 m. m). 



The poisers appear light brown. 



The dark spot in the leaf is the part occupied by the larva, 

 and the "yellow or greenish aureole," which is represented 

 within the light outer lines in the figure, is probably caused by 

 the disturbance of the tissues, or more likely by the absorption 

 of the nutritive sap by the larva. As these larvae cannot de- 

 vour the tissue, but simply live upon the sap, the diameter of 

 the spots occupied by them is usually little greater than the 

 length of the inmates. In addition to the brief description ®f 

 the larva given by Baron Osten-Sacken, it may be noted that 

 when removed from its mine and placed upon a flat surface it 

 has the power of springing an inch or two into the air. This 

 is done by doubling up the body and suddenly extending it 

 again, and probably the large spines on the last segment are 

 made use of for this purpose. Some other species are known 

 to possess the same power of springing, and in the monograph 

 referred to (p. 183) it is remarked that " all such larvae belong 

 to the sub-genus Diplosis." The venation of the wings corre- 

 sponds with the venation given for the sub-genus Diplosis, 

 and the number of joints of the antennae also agree with the 

 characters as drawn up by the late Dr. H. Loew. But without 

 referring to Dr. Lcew's arrangement, I should have been in- 

 clined to describe the antennas of the male as thirteen-jointed, 

 each joint being very deeply and widely constricted in the 

 middle and forming two bulb-like divisions. 



No thorough, cheap, and easily applied remedy can be given 

 for this pest, because the larva, living between the epidermal 

 layers of the leaf, is safe from the action of poisons. Shower- 

 ing the trees with a very fine spray of kerosene emulsion or 

 whale-oil soap when the flies are active or ovipositing might 

 destroy many of them ; but, where the trees are large, this 

 would be difficult and expensive, and would have to be re- 

 peated, and the result then could only be a partial success. As 

 the larvag fall to the ground and probably pupate directly 

 beneath the trees on which they live, they might be best and 



