STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 455 
BARBERRY-APHIS. ITS EGOS. WHERE PLACED. 
of the present century, became infested with an aphis in the year 1846. 
How this insect came upon this shrub was quite a query in my mind. The 
nearest bush of this kind within my knowledge was two miles distant, 
with intervening hills, woods and streams of water. None of the insects 
appeared to acquire wings whereby it was possible for them to migrate 
and establish themselves elsewhere, until quite late in the autumn. And 
upon quite a thorough, research which I was able to make, it did not appear 
that any insect of this kind had ever been noticed as occurring upon the 
barberry in any other part of the world. Under all the circumstances I 
was in doubt whether this insect could have come to this bush from some 
distant bush of the kind in the country around it, or whether by some pecu¬ 
liar condition of the atmosphere or other agency it might not have been 
spontaneously generated upon the shrub. 
In the year 1851, in my Descriptive Catalogue of New York Homoptera, 
published in the Fourth Report of the State Cabinet of Natural History, 
page 65, I inserted this insect as a new species, under the name Aphis 
Berberidis. I soon after discovered that this name had a few years previ¬ 
ously been given to a European species, by Kaltenbach, in his Monograph 
of the Plant-lice, page 95—a work which I have not seen. But from the 
information which I obtain from Koch (Aphiden, p. 30), and Walker (List 
of Homopterous Insects of the British Museum, p. 996), I entertain no 
doubt that the European Aphis Berberidis is identical with the insect to 
which I had given the same name in this country. 
This insect continued to infest the same bush until the year 1855, when 
it failed to make its appearance, and has not since returned. At no time 
did it become greatly multiplied, nor was the shrub perceptibly injured by 
it. From the full notes taken on repeated examinations made in different 
years, I prepare the following description of the insect in its different stages 
of growth and the course which it annually runs. 
The Barberry-aphis is started each year from eggs laid in autumn and 
which have survived the winter. So late as the middle of November I have 
observed the winged females busily engaged in depositing their eggs. 
They place them in the most secure and best protected situation which this 
shrub furnishes. At regular distances along the slender straight stalks of 
the barberry are permanent buds forming thick stump-like projections bear¬ 
ing in summer a erown of leaves from their summits and armed on their 
outer sides with three formidable prickles, so sharp that neither bird nor 
beast will be apt to come near them. It is in the axils of these buds that 
the Female drops her eggs. When first extruded the eggs are very glossy 
and bright yellow, but by exposure to the air and light they soon change 
to a brown and finally to a jet black color. They lio loosely, as many as 
can be heaped together in some of the axils, the roughness of the bark aid¬ 
ing in holding them. But their attachment is so slight and insecure that 
they nearly all become dislodged by the storms of winter and fall off and 
perish. Any which remain are quickened by the warm days of early spring, 
the young lice hatching from them as soon as the leaves arc sufficiently 
expanded to shelter and nourish them. If but a single egg survives the 
