268 



JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 



[Vol. 8 



Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the 

 American Association of Official Horticultural 

 Inspectors 



(Papers continued) 



IMPORTANT INSECT PESTS COLLECTED ON IMPORTED 

 NURSERY STOCK IN 1914 



By E. R. Sasscer 



During the past 3^ear the Federal Horticultural Board has been is- 

 suing, from time to time, in the form of news letters, lists of insects 

 and diseases intercepted on imported nursery stock b}^ inspectors 

 throughout the states. In preparing these lists an attempt has been 

 made to present them in such a simplified manner as to be intelligible 

 to the isolated inspector as well as to entomologists and pathologists. 

 These news letters are not published, and the object of this contri- 

 bution is to put on record the finding of certain injurious insects, some 

 of which have not been listed in previous reports. 



Fifty-one nests of the brown-tail moth {Eiiproctis chrysorrhcea Linn.) 

 have been collected on French nursery stock, and three egg masses of 

 the gipsy moth {Porthetria dispar Linn.) on cedar and camellia from 

 Japan, and a single egg mass on azalea from Belgium. Larvae of the 

 pink boll worm (Gelechia gossypiella Saunders) were found in three 

 shipments of Egyptian cotton, one of which exhibited a 20 per cent 

 infestation and was to be forwarded to Arizona. This cotton pest is 

 briefly described by Mr. W. D. Hunter in an unnumbered circular of 

 the Bureau of Entomology, and, from all indications, would be a 

 serious menace to the cotton industry if established in the southern 

 states. 



• A single living adult of the olive fruit fly {Dacus oJece Rossi) was dis- 

 covered in a small package of olive seed from Cape Town, South 

 Africa, after having been en route for 28 days. According to Silvestri^ 

 it requires from 47 to 49 daj'S in Italy for the pupa to transform to the 

 adult, and it is possible, therefore, for this pest to enter the United 

 States through eastern ports of entry and still have ample time to 

 reach the olive-growing sections of California prior to the emergence 

 of the adult. In addition to the olive fruit fly, a dead specimen of what 

 appeared to be Dacus semispharens (Becker) was found in the same 

 small package. 



Avocado seed from Guatemala were infested with the larvae of an 

 undescribed curculio {Conotrachelus sp.). The number of larvae per 

 seed varied from one to five, and the injury occasioned is not unlike 



