136 Forty-first Report on the State Museum, 



keepsie — midway between Albany and New York — in its northern 

 extension. It is devoutly to be hoped that through the discoveries 

 and improvements made within the last few years in insecticides 

 and in means by which they may be conveyed into and distributed 

 over our larger shade trees, the distribution of this obnoxious 

 foreign intruder may speedily be arrested. 



Another of our numerous imported pests, the larch saw-fly, 

 Nematus Ericlisonii Hartig, has for some time been extending 

 slowly over Northern New York, and this year has been observed 

 in some of the south-eastern counties of the State, as in Albany, 

 Schoharie and Otsego. In some localities where it has been the 

 most abundant, it has caused the death of large numbers of 

 the native larchs or tamaracks, Larix Americana. I had hoped to 

 present in this report an account of observations made by me 

 Upon this insect the past summer, in Hamilton county and else- 

 where, but it is necessarily postponed for the present. 



A strawberry leaf-folder, of somewhat different habits from 

 those ascribed to the leaf-folder known to infest this plant, was 

 observed by Prof. Peck, at Menands, Albany county, the latter 

 part of June. It was believed to be identical with one that had 

 appeared in September and October of the preceding year, thus 

 indicating a double brood. The attempt to rear the moth was 

 unsuccessful. 



The Zebra cabbage worm, as from its peculiar markings it has 

 been named — scientifically, Mamestra picta (Harris), which has 

 won for itself a bad reputation from its readiness to feed upon a 

 large number of quite dissimilar food-plants, as several of the 

 garden vegetables, flowering plants, ornamental shrubs, buckwheat, 

 etc., has been discovered at Chatham, Columbia county, by Mr. 

 George T. Powell in defoliating currant bushes. They were found 

 in their young stage feeding socially in large • companies, and from 

 having been rarely seen at that age they were not recognized until 

 subsequent moltings developed their well-known and characteristic 

 ornamentation. 



In occasional instances where insect injuries are presented for 

 which no explanation can be offered, it is thought proper to report 

 them in the hope that they may have been observed and accounted 

 for by some other entomologist or careful observer. Attention was 

 called in August to such an attack, by Mr W. E. Harding, of 



