The Lesser Apple Leaf Roller. 
( Teras minuta, Robinson.) 
| Order Lepidoptera. Family Tortricid^e. 
[A greenish yellow, slightly hairy worm, about half an inch 
long, affecting the young leaves of the terminal twigs. Pupates in 
the rolled leaves, and emerges as an orange moth in summer, 
or a gray one in autumn. 1 
The lesser leaf roller has been seriously injurious in Illinois for 
more than twenty years, and must, I believe, rank first in the list 
of leaf-eating nursery insects. Beginning its attack as soon as the 
leaves have partially unfolded, and affecting largely the terminal 
twigs, it is capable of doing great damage by checking that 
straight upward growth so necessary for a successful nursery tree, 
and causing the throwing out of side branches, which give to the 
tree a stunted, scraggy appearance. 
* , 
LITERATURE AND NOMENCLATURE. 
The literature relating to this insect is in a peculiarly chaotic 
condition, owing to the fact that it has been described by 
five different entomologists under as many different specific 
names. These various names have been held good by most 
writers until within a few years, and the insect has been 
frequently treated of as one or another of the five species. 
The reasons for this peculiar multiplicity of names are to be 
found in the wide distribution of the species, the varying food 
habits of the larva, and the remarkable dimorphism of the imago. 
The species was first described as Tortrix minuta, by Mr. C. T. 
Robinson in February, 1869 (Trans. Am. Ent. Soc. A ol. I., p. 
276; pi. vi, fig. 49). The specimen from which the description 
was written had been collected in Texas, by Belfrage. 
The following year the insect was redescribed twice, once by 
Dr. LeBaron as Tortrix malivorana (2d Rep. St. Ent. Ill., pp. 
20-23); and again by Dr. Packard as Tortrix vacciniivorana 
(Mass. Agr. Rep., 1870, p. 24). Dr. LeBaron had bred the moth 
from larvae feeding upon apple, and published an extended ac- 
