27 



Fisr. 3. 



The life history of the Purblind Spinx, Smerinthus myops, Fig. 3, is very similar to 

 that of the species just described. It appears in the perfect state also in June and July, 



The moth is very handsome. The head and 

 thorax are chocolate brown with a purplish 

 tinge, the thorax is striped with yellow and 

 the abdomen brown marked with yellowish 

 spots. The fore wings are angulated and 

 excavated on the hind margin, and are or- 

 namented with bands and patches of black 

 on a chocolate-brown ground, The hind 

 wings are dull yellow with the outer half a 

 rich brown, and have an eye-like spot to- 

 wards the inner margin, black with a pale 

 blue centre. 



The caterpillar much resembles Fig. 2. It is green with two rows of reddish brown 

 spots on each side and six oblique yellow lines, with two shorter lines of the same colour 

 on the anterior segments. The head is bluish green, margined with yellow, and the curved 

 horn at the tail green, tinged with yellow at the sides. When full grown it measures 

 about two inches in length, and is nearly cylindrical in form. It feeds on the leaves of 

 the cherry tree, both the wild and cultivated varieties. 



The insect passes the winter in the pupa state under the earth ; the chrysalis is 

 smooth and of a dark brown colour. Both these insects are comparatively rare, and have 

 never, as far as we know, appeared in sufficient numbers to prove injurious to the trees- 

 on which they feed. 



Pulvinaria Innumerabilis — Rathvon. 



This insect, which has commonly been known as the Grape-vine Bark-louse, might 

 with perhaps greater propriety be now designated the Maple-tree Bark-louse, for the 

 reason that it has been more frequently found on maples, and has inflicted more injury on 

 these trees than it has on grape-vines. The great abundance of this insect during the 

 past season has called general attention to it and elicited many enquiries in reference to 

 its history and habits ; indeed, in many sections of Western Ontario, as well as in the 

 adjoining States of Michigan and New York, it has appeared in such swarms as to endanger" 

 the lives of the trees attacked. Branches have been sent to us so thickly covered with 

 the insect in its various stages of growth that they could not be handled without crushing 

 some of the numerous population. 



The earliest description of this insect was given by Dr. S. S. Rathvon, • 

 of Lancaster, Pa., in 1854, who at that time gave the results of several 

 years' observation on this species, which had occurred in his neigh-" 

 bourhood on Basswood or American Linden trees (Tilia americana), 

 He found them to swarm in such countless hosts that he gave the insect 

 the significant name of inmtmerablis. The late Dr. Fitch next pub- 

 lished an account of it in the Transactions of the New York State" 

 Agricultural Society for 1859, since which several authors have figured 

 and described this insect; but its life history was not fully unfolded 

 until taken in hand by the late lamented J. D. Putnam, of Davenport, 

 Iowa, who published in 1879, in the Report of the Davenport Academy 

 of Sciences, a most elaborate and complete description of its life history, 

 illustrated with two plates crowded with figures representing the various ■ 

 stages of development, all drawn by himself from nature. To these 

 several publications we are mainly indebted for the facts here presented. 

 This bark-louse appears first in the form of a brown scale, from 

 which, as it increases in size, there is protruded from the female scale 

 cylindrical white filaments of a waxy nature, in which eggs are laid, 

 and these cotton-like filaments, as new fibres are secreted, are constantly 

 pushed further back until there protrudes a bunch about four times 

 as large as the scale, as shown in fig. 4, which is thickly crowded with- 



v-J\ 



Smmv 



