inse:ct notes for 19 1 2. 449 



This colony was on the stem near the ground and was only a 



few rods from Crataegus from which I had collected bakeri in 



the spring. 



>i<* ******* 



It may not be out of place at this time to add an ecological 

 note on Schisoneura lanigera in the form of a problem needing 

 further study. That is what is the fate of such winter eggs of 

 lanigera as are sometimes deposited on the bark of apple? That 

 this question is of mOre biological than economic interest is 

 shown by the significant wholesale flight of the sexuparae 

 (fall migrants) away from Pyrus which provides for the nor- 

 mal deposition of the true sexes and winter eggs on the true 

 winter host with lanigera as is the case with other migratory 

 aphides. 



But where woolly aphid colonies are very thick, sexes and 

 the winter eggs are sometimes found upon the apple. That 

 such occurrences are accidental * seems not improbable but 

 whether the emerging stem mothers of lanigera can develop on 

 apple or other Pyrus and if so whether she is a bark feeder or 

 whether she curls an apple leaf (as she would an elm leaf in 

 her ordinary situation) and what the characters of her progeny 

 are, seem to be few of the points whiph it would be of no slight 

 biological interest to know. 



Although I have no observations to ofi^er on the deposition of 

 S. lanigera eggs on Pyrus, I have been more than a little inter- 

 ested in accounts of such occurrences which have recently been 

 sent me and also in the published records, the earliest of which, 

 for this country at least, seems to be that in the Report of the 

 Entomologist of the United States Department of Agriculture 

 for the year 1879 by J. Henry Comstock. On page 259 of this 

 Report Dr. L. O. Howard recorded his observations made in a 

 little orchard of Russian apple trees then on the grounds of the 



* I have seen Procipliilns venafnsciis fall migrants collect on both 

 Ulmus and Pyrus somefimes in great numbers where they gave birth to 

 true sexes and where winter eggs were deposited but so far as my 

 observations have gone the spring stem mother develops only on 

 Fraxiniis and relatives (as Lilac and Forsythia) so that a deposition of 

 the winter egg in any other situation than on the true winter host is 

 apparently an accidental "error" on the part of the fall migrants which 

 are responsible for the safe disposal of the true sexes on the appropriate 

 winter host. 



