210 THE LESSER APPLE LEAF-FOLDER. 
some distance from the place, my attention was arrested by the 
blasted appearance of his apple nursery, the foliage looking, at a 
distance, as if it had been scorched by fire. Upon entering the 
inclosure, the authors of the mischief were readily detected. Up- 
on putting apart the two halves of the folded leaves, a little worm 
could oceasionally be seen, but at this date, most of them had 
passed into the pupa state, and many of the moths had already 
emerged, so that a flock of them could be put to flight almost any- 
where, by brushing against the plants. Mr. Wier says that, little 
known as this insect seems to be, this is not the first year that it 
has injured his nursery, and that other nurseries in his neighbor- 
hood have been equally infested. 
This little insect furnishes a remarkable iaie of the sudden 
appearance and rapid multiplication of noxious species. The 
moth is so rare that I cannot learn that it has ever before been 
seen, even by entomologists. There is not a specimen of it in 
the collection of either Mr. Walsh or Mr. Riley ; and Mr. Glover 
of Washington, who is himself an experienced lepidopterist, and 
is familiar with most of the eastern collections, and to whom 
had an opportunity of showing my specimens, said he had never 
seen it, and remarked that the species is so conspicuous, notwith- 
standing its small size, on account of its bright orange color, 
that he felt confident that he would recollect it if he had ever seen 
it; and since then I have received a letter from Mr. Glover, in 
which he says that he has recently had occasion to examine several 
of the large collections of insects in Philadelphia and Boston, and 
that he could find no specimen of this moth. And yet this sum- 
mer, in a single nursery of young apple trees, specimens enough 
could have been captured, in a short time, to supply all the cab- 
inets in the wor 
The larva of this moth is a small greenish naked caterpillar 
with a pale amber-brown head and pale incisions. In some indi- 
viduals the whole body is of a pale brownish tint. These caterpil- 
lars occupy the upper side of the leaves, usually singly, but some- 
times two or three in company, eating off the upper cuticle and 
curling the sides upwards till the edges nearly or quite meet, and 
tying them together with a web. In this inclosure the little cater- 
pillar goes through its transformations. It lines the opposite 
sides of the leaf, where the pupa lies, with fine white silk. 
The pupa is three-tenths of an inch long or a little less, termi- 
