JASSIDAE OF NEW YORK STATE 



BY HERBERT OSBORN 



A comprehensive list of the Jassidae of New York State seems 

 specially warranted because so large a number of species occurrmg 

 in the United States have been described from that State, owmg to 

 the work of Dr Fitch and Mr Van Duzee and, moreover, the fact 

 that its fauna is fairly representative for the eastern United States. 

 The present report is based on previous lists or descriptions by 

 Fitch Van Duzee, Felt, Southwick, Slingerland and others; the 

 material submitted to the writer by these parties or exammed m 

 the collections at Cornell University and the New York State 

 Museum and personal collections in the summer of 1904, when the 

 writer had the opportunity to visit different parts of New York 

 State examining collections and collecting new material m the 

 vicinity of Buffalo, Ithaca, Albany, Salem, Long Island and Staten 

 Island Representative sections of the State were thus covered 

 and with the material previously accumulated or reported, covers, 

 it is believed, quite thoroughly the Jassid fauna of the State. Fur- 

 thermore, collections by Mr E. P. Van Duzee in the Adirondack 

 region extends the area covered still more thoroughly. 



The economic importance of the Jassidae was recognized by 

 Dr Fitch in his various writings and he described a large number 

 of the species as injurious to forest trees, grasses, etc. The impor- 

 tance of these insects is not yet fully appreciated owing to the 

 nature of their work but they will undoubtedly become more fully 

 recognized as farmers become aware of the more insidious sources 

 of loss to their various crops. Attention has been called elsewhere 

 to the destructive effect of these insects in pastures and meadows 

 but observations during the past summer in the pastures and low- 

 lands of New York indicated less loss of this sort than has fre- 

 quently been noted in other localities. This may have been m 

 part due to the season, the constant moisture affording opportunity 

 for the crop to grow continuously. In some cases the hillside 

 pastures were pretty badly infested and the growth of the crop 

 evidently much reduced, also in low ground, marshy pastures, 

 certain species swarmed in such numbers that the vegetation 

 must have been drained to a serious extent. 



It may be noted that the mode of feeding in the group consists 

 in puncturing the tissues of various plants, sucking the juices and 

 thus draining their vitaUty though not necessarily causing the 



498 



