920 
Annual Report of New Yore 
CURRANT-WORM. REACHES UTICA IN S1XTT-THREE. 
then of the currant bushes. As wc have no accounts of it else¬ 
where in that part of the State at this time, it was probably 
brought direct to Fulton in plants obtained from Rochester. 
The editor of the Rural New Yorker , this year reports (p. 199), 
that he had uprooted and burned all his bushes, and now having 
planted a few new ones, they are growing thriftily, and the fly 
does not come near them, it having been starved out or emigrated 
to better quarters. H. H. Doolittle, however, says (vol. xv, p. 
119), he finds that cuttings and one year old plants are not attacked, 
though when they become older than this they enjoy no such 
immunity. 
When attending the Slate Fair this year, at Rochester, October 
2d, I had a very interesting visit to the Mount Hope Nurseries of 
Messrs. Ellvvanger & Barry, and inquiring with respect to this 
currant worm, was informed by Mr. Barry that it had this year 
appeared in their grounds for the first time. A numerous brood 
of the worms, in June, had totally defoliated the bushes at the sin¬ 
gle point which they occupied. They then disappeared until a 
short time before, when, what was evidently the progeny of the 
previous brood had spread themselves over a much greater extent 
of the bushes. He supposed they were then still present, but upon 
repairing to the spot, not a worm could we find, although they had 
been immensely numerous there only a few days before. The rue¬ 
ful aspect of the bushes stripped quite bare of their leaves attested 
what greedy cormorants these worms are. 
In 1863 the worm made its appearance at Utica and other points 
in Oneida county, as I learn from several sources, coming like an 
invading army, thronging the bushes, and through the entire season 
keeping them so completely defoliated, in this and the following 
years, that they were mostly killed, and the few surviving plants 
were so weak and puny as to be valueless. Mr. J. Dagwcll 
informed me he had about a hundred currant and gooseberry 
bushes, and soon after these worms came upon them, his whole 
family one day turned out with cups in hand, and in an hour or 
two picked a bushel of worms, without getting all that were on 
the bushes. In 1866, residents of Utica informed me they had 
not seen a currant that year, so universally were the bushes ruined 
in and around t hat city. 
At Watertown, Mr. W. Ives informs me, this insect made its 
appearance this year, and kept the bushes so destitute of leaves in 
