280 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I9O9. 



That Packard himself was familiar with the galls of both 

 abieticolens and the European ahietis and considered them dis- 

 tinct is shown by his item which follows the foregoing one just 

 quoted : 



"38. The European Spruce Bud-louse, Adelges ahietis Unn. 



"We observed this species in considerable numbers on the 

 Norway spruces on the grounds of the Peabody Academy of 

 Science at Salem, in August, 1881. The deformation produced 

 in the terminal buds and twigs were like those figured in Ratze- 

 burg's Die Waldverderbniss, Bd. i, PI. 28, figs, i, 2." 



Thomas states that he was certain that he was dealing with 

 a distinct species, and one brief item is sufficient to prove him 

 correct, for he uses one difference which is alone enough to sep- 

 arate these two species when he says that with the European 

 species, Chermes ahietis Linn, "the wings are tinged with green". 

 While color distinctions are often an unsafe basis, it is stead- 

 fast one here, for Chermes ahietis has uniformly and conspic- 

 uously green wings while the dark species developing in that 

 Spruce gall ("found in abundance on the spruce in Maine") 

 which when deserted "stands out from the axis of the shoot, 

 thus giving the cone-like appearance to the end of the shoot" 

 has the stigmal region reddish brown, or 'smoky yellowish,' 

 and never at all greenish either when newly emerged from the 

 gall or upon aging. 



It seemed desirable in a circumstance so complicated to give, 

 before presenting original data, the historical situation for the 

 species under consideration, which develops in a cone-like gall 

 on the black spruce (in which connection it was named abie- 

 ticolens in 1879 by Thomas and subsequently merged by error 

 with ahietis*), and migrates to the needles of the white pine 

 (in which connection it had been previously named pinifolice 

 by Fitch, 1858, and merged by error with pinicorticis'\ in 1869 

 where it has remained for 40 years in oblivion). 



* Fernald and Cooley, 34th Report Mass. Agric. College 1897, PP- 

 9-100. 

 t Shimer. Trans. Am. Ent. Soc. 2: 383. 



