State Agricultural Society. 
909 
CURRANT-WORM AND SAW-FLY. 
worms. They feed upon the leaves of the cultivated gooseberries 
as well as those of the red currant, and seemed to be most fond 
of Houghton’s seedling gooseberry, from the small plants of which 
they had entirely stripped the leaves. 
How long these worms are engaged in feeding and obtaining 
their growth is not stated. They are about three-eighths of an 
inch in length when fully grown, and the head is then lighter 
colored than when younger. They then forsake the bushes and 
crawl into the ground, where they enclose themselves in brown 
oval cocoons, which are about the size and shape of kernels of 
wheat. They remain in these cocoons only about a week, in the 
summer season, but the last or autumnal brood lies in the ground 
in its pupa state through the winter. In coming out, the insect 
bursts or gnaws off the end of the cocoon, and leaves it lying in the 
form of a lid. 
In its perfect state it is described as being 0.20 in length and 0.42 
in width across its extended wings. The head, thorax and abdo¬ 
men are black, and the legs light brown. The wings are hyaline, 
with the stigma and veins brownish. The surface of the wings 
is covered with minute hairs standing erect at a considerable dis¬ 
tance apart. 
In size and the color of its body and limbs, it appears to be iden¬ 
tical with the European Pristophorci rufipes of St. Fargeau, but the 
information which is furnished us is too limited to enable us to 
decisively pronounce the two insects to be the same. 
The writer says that air-slacked lime sprinkled over the leaves 
will destroy these worms, as will also a mixture of whale oil soap 
and water. Tobacco water also has the same effect. But all these 
remedies require to be thoroughly applied. Hellebore powder, 
as mentioned under the next species, will doubtless be the most 
efficacious and economical remedy for this species also. 
Currant-worm and Saw-fly, Ncmatus tnmaculatus , St. Fargeau. 
(Hymenoptera, Tenthrediuidre.) 
Stripping bare of their leaves the currant and gooseberry bushes throughout the 
season, but most numerous in June and in August; flocks of pale green twenty- 
footed worms with numerous black dots, a black head, and the neck and last ring 
of the body yellow, three-fourths of an inch long; passing its pupa stato under¬ 
ground and producing a yellow four-winged fly having three large black spots on 
its thorax often united into one. 
An insect which of all others is most interesting to the inliabi- 
