STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
417 
CURRANT. STALKS. . 
shoots every year, whereby the places of those that perish are 
constantly re-supplied. 
After the leaves have fallen in autumn and during the winter 
these dead stalks are readily distinguished from the live ones by 
being dotted over with a pretty little fungus the size of a pin 
head and of a pale bright red color and a corky texture, which I 
suppose to be the Spheeria Ribesia of Fries. Another fungus also 
appears on the small twigs, very similar to this but having its 
surface flattened and of a coal black color. 
If one of these currant stalks is split asunder the cause of its 
death is plainly evident. Commonly through the whole length of 
the stalk the pith is found to have been eaten away by a worm, 
leaving it hollow or filled in places with a loose woody powder, 
like fine sawdust. Each of the branches is also found to be bored 
in the same manner. And lying in this cavity, one, two or more 
of the worms which have done this mischief are met with, in all 
the stalks which have recently been destroyed. 
The only insect to which this injury has heretofore been impu¬ 
ted in this country is a kind of moth closely related to the Peach 
tree borer, which perforates the currant stalks in Europe in this 
same manner and has been brought to this country with the cur¬ 
rant. But the past winter, on coming to inspect these worms, 
finding they were wholly destitute of feet, I became assured they 
were a different insect from that which they have all along been 
supposed to be. And on rearing some of them to their perfect 
form, I obtained in place of the European currant borer, a beetle, 
one of the native insects of this country whose history has hith¬ 
erto been unknown, and which is nearly related to the Apple tree 
borer. 
This insect is the Clytus supemotatus of Mr. Say (Jour. Acad. Nat. 
Sci. iii,425) and of Prof. Hal deman, (Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc. x,42) 
and the Psenocerus Pini of Dr. Leconte (Jour. Acad. 2d series, ii, 
) and of the Catalogue of Colcoptera lately published by the 
Smithsonian Institution. It would be an incongruity much to be 
regretted in the scientific names of the insects of our country, if this 
species which subsists upon the currant had received a name indi¬ 
eating it to belong to the pine. But fortunately this is not the 
case. The Callidium Pini of Olivier, which Dr. Leconte supposes 
