STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
419 
CURRANT. STALKS. 
in a particular stalk than can be accommodated in the pith. In 
this case some of them resort to the soft outermost layers of tho 
wood immediately beneath the bark, where broad shallow burrows 
stuffed with the castings of the worm will be met with, occasion¬ 
ally with the worm lying in them. I have in one instance found 
twelve worms in the different parts of a single stalk. 
When the worm has completed its growth and is about to leavo 
off feeding it gnaws a small orifice out to the bark through the 
wooden wall by which it is surrounded, in order that when it has 
changed to a beetle it can make its exit from its prison by merely 
rupturing the bark. The hole thus made is then stuffed full of 
little chips to protect the bark from being prematurely broken. 
It then withdraws itself down the stalk slightly below this hole, 
and constructs a bed on which to repose during the long period 
of inactivity that now follows. This bed is formed of short 
woody fibres wadded together and filling the cavity for the 
length of about half an inch. A similar mass is commonly 
placed above the worm also, formed mostly of finer materials like 
sawdust intermingled with brown and white grains, the castings 
of the worms. The space between these two partitions is about 
half an inch in length and forms the chamber in which the worm 
reposes until it changes to a beetle. In the Entomological Museum 
at the Agricultural Rooms is a currant stalk showing the burrow 
of this insect, with one of the worms lying in its cell, having a 
slip of transparent mica cemented over it, and also showing 
slightly above it the orifice which this worm had cut through the 
wood whereby to make its exit. 
It is about the first of June that the parent insect deposits her 
eggs upon the currant stalks, and the worms get their growth by 
the close of the sea-son. They repose in their cells through the 
winter, changing to pupae with the warmth of the following 
spring, and begin to appear abroad in their perfect state as early 
as the middle of May, the sexes pairing immediately after they 
come out. 
Although the larvae of this insect are now found in such abun¬ 
dance in the stalks of the cultivated currant in our gardens, before 
this shrub was introduced upon this continent it doubtless sus¬ 
tained itself upon the wild currant. And it probably is not limit- 
