804 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
OAK. 1.1MBS. 
years later. Elaphidion, therefore, appears to be the legitimate name of 
the genus to which our Oak pruncr pertains. 
In at least three-fourths of the fallen liiuhs no worm is to be found ; and 
an examination of them shows that the insect perished at the time the limb 
was severed, and before it had excavated any burrow upward in its center, 
no perforation being present except that leading into the lateral twig. It 
is probable that in many of these instances the limb broke when the worm 
was in the act of gnawing it asunder, either from its own weight or from 
a wind arising whilst the work was in progress. And even though the 
worm may have withdrawn into its hole and plugged the opening behind it, 
it is frequently discovered here, probably, and devoured by birds. Atter 
a violent wind in the summer season, some of our insect-eating birds may 
always be noticed actively in search of limbs and trees that have thereby 
been broken, their instinct teaching them that this breakage usually occuts 
from the wood being weakened by the mining operations of worms therein, 
whose lurking places are now opened to them. And they will be seen 
industriously occupied in picking around the fractured ends of the wood, 
and feasting upon the grubs which they there find. Numbers of our wood¬ 
boring larvae are thus destroyed, and the Oak pruner, notwithstanding the 
precautions it takes to secrete itself, doubtless frequently falls a prey to 
these sagacious foragers. 
These insects will undoubtedly at times occur in such numbers as to 
render it important that they be destroyed, at least where they resort to 
the peach or other valuable trees. And this may readily be effected by 
gathering and burning the fallen limbs in the winter or the early part of 
spring. 
The Single striped tree hopper, No. 102, is common upon oak 
limbs, puncturing them and sucking their juices. 
30G. Oak bligut, Eriosoma Qucrci, now species. (Homoptcra. Aphidce.) 
A species of blight, or a wooly aphis upon oak limbs, puncturing them and 
exhausting them of their sap, was met with in northern Illinois, but I have 
never seen it in New York. It is very like a similar insect upon the bass¬ 
wood. The winged individuals are black throughout, and slightly dusted 
over with an ash-gray powder resembling mold. The fore wings are clear 
and glassy, with their stigma-spot dusky and feebly transparent, their rib- 
vein black, and their third oblique vein abortive nearly or quite to the 
fork. It is 0.1G long to the tips of its wings. I find no wooly aphis men¬ 
tioned by European authors as infesting the oak, except the Eriosoma 
Quercvs of Sir Oswald Mosley (Gardener’s Chronicle, i. 828), which, in 
the List of Homopterous insects of the British Museum, p. 1083, is sup¬ 
posed to be the Coccus lanatus of Geoffroy, and would hence appear to bo 
a very different insect from the one now described. 
