STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
427 
CURRANT. LEAVES. 
140 . Currant bark louse, Lecanium Ribis, new species. (Homopfera. 
Uoccidise.) 
• 
A hemispherical scale of a brownish yellow color, about 0.30 
in diameter, adhering to the bark of the garden currant, its mar¬ 
gin finely wrinkled transversely; often perforated with one, two 
or three holes, from which have issued minute brilliant green 
four-winged flies which in their larva state have fed upon and con¬ 
sumed the minute eggs which originally existed under these 
scales. This is quite common in some gardens, and I suspect has 
been introduced into this country with the currant, although 
European authors have made no mention of a scale insect as 
belonging either to this shrub or the gooseberry. It will be most 
readily found before the leaves put forth in the spring. 
AFFECTING 'THE LEAVES. 
141 American Currant moth, Abraxas! Ribcaria. Fitch. (Lepidoptera 
Geometridsa.) 
About the middle of June, eating the leaves of the currant and 
.gooseberry, in some gardens stripping the bushes entirely naked; a 
cylindrical ten-footed measure worm nearly an inch long, bright 
yellow varied on each side with white and with numerous black 
spots and large round dots regularly arranged, each giving out a 
fine black bristle, burying itself slightly and changing to a pupa 
without forming any cocoon; the moth coming out therefrom 
about the first of July, of a pale nankin yellow color, the wings 
with one or more faint dusky spots behind their middle in the 
male and in the female with an irregular band crossing both pairs. 
Width 1.30 to 1.45. 
This is the most remarkable depredating insect which we have 
upon the currant in this country. It was fully figured and 
described in the Transactions of this Society ten years ago (vol. 
vii, p. 461), at which time it w r as much more numerous within 
the sphere of my observation than it has since been, although 
scarcely a year has passed but that some gardens might be seen 
with their currant bushes nearly or quite defoliated by it. It has 
been more numerous the present year (1857) than for several 
years before, and I learn from Ilev. Wm. C. Reichel that in 
