1 1 8 First Report on Economic Zoology. 
forms an excellent trap ; in a few hours, says Kollar, they will be 
found covered with beetles, particularly so when the stem (of each 
trap) has been pressed into the earth. 
These decoys must not be laid too late and must all be burnt 
before the brood escapes. This plan has frequently been known to 
clear a forest of Hylobius pest. 
Billets of unbarked fire-wood laid about will attract the beetles 
to lay their eggs. These should be destroyed from the end of June 
to the middle of July. 
Smearing the lower parts of the trunks with a mixture of mud 
and lime early in April would probably check egg-laying or perhaps 
it would be better still carried out in March. 
Young trees containing Pissodes larvae should be pulled up and 
burned in June and July. 
All cones attacked should be collected and burned ; they may 
easily be told by the exuding turpentine. Wood-peckers ( Picadce ) 
should be encouraged. 
The Spruce Gall Aphis. 
( Chermes abietis, Linn.) 
Deformed growths on Spruce were sent by Mr. J. Saunders, of 
49, Rothesay Road, Luton. These proved to be caused by the Spruce 
Gall Aphis ( Chermes abietis, Linn.). These galls are at first bright 
green and rosy and shaped like a small pine-cone. The “ mother ” 
Chermes is oval, wingless, and woolly, green and purple in hue with 
blackish legs. This form is found in the spring and inserts her 
proboscis into the tissue of the plant just below a bud. This causes 
the irritation which commences the diseased growth. 
The female lays her eggs amongst a woolly secretion on the gall ; 
the young larvae coming from the same stick their proboscides into 
the gall which still further swells and grows up more or less around 
each larva. The larvae are really enclosed by the unnatural swollen 
leaves of the bud overlapping them. Later these galls harden, 
become brown, the chambers split open, and the Chermes make 
their exit. These soon turn to pupae, and then yellowish-green 
winged females, which fly from spruce to spruce and deposit about 
twenty eggs each. These eggs give rise to larvae which grow into 
the “ mother-queen ” in the spring. The male is a small apterous 
louse found in the galls, very sedentary in habits. 
