Reports On Injurious Insects Classic Reprint PDF Download

Excerpt from Report of Some Injurious Insects: Of the Year 1878 Without dwelling longer upon these considerations, permit me to pass directly to a brief notice of a few injurious insects which have come within my notice during the past year - a year, it may be incidentally remarked, so signalized by a scarcity of insects, that the work of collecting for the cabinet, and for scientific study, was almost abandoned. The report made at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at St. Louis, in August last, from entomologists representing the various portions of the United States, was unanimous, that of the Noctuidae (a family of the moths comprising the cutworms and a large proportion of the species most detrimental to the agriculturist), not one individual was to be found, where a hundred were to be met with the preceding year. Your attention will first be invited to an insect which now for the first time claims local habitation and a name in our list of insect foes. It may be called The Clover-Seed Fly - Cecidomyia trifolii n. sp. Early in the month of June, 1877, some heads of red clover (Trifolium pratense) were brought to me by Mr. T. L. Harison, Secretary of the New York State Agricultural Society, and my attention was called to some small, worm-like creatures contained within the heads, and apparently feeding upon the seeds. From their acutely elliptical form and vermiform movements when taken from the clover and placed upon a table, they seemed to be the larvae of some species of dipterous insect. All the writers upon economic entomology at my command, American and European, were searched for a notice of the insect, but no mention of it was found. During the same month, examination of heads of clover collected at West Albany, at West Troy, and it is believed at one or two other localities in the State, was made by Mr. Charles H. Peck, State Botanist, whose attention had been called to the insect, and the larvae were discovered within them. On the 19th of the same month, during a field meeting of the Troy Scientific Association held at Schroon Lake, Warren county, N. Y., the larvae, in small numbers, were found by me in some heads plucked in the village of Schroon. Subsequently my engagements were of such a nature, that I made no further observations on the "clover-seed worm" during the season. In the fore part of August, 1878, heads of red clover were handed to me by Mr. Harison, which were said to have been taken from an infested field, but I failed to detect the presence of larvae. On the 19th of the same month, six heads were sent from the President of your Society, Mr. George W. Hoffman, of Elmira, N. Y. They contained very few seeds, but the examination was not sufficiently thorough to enable me to say whether the seeds had not been formed, or if their substance had been devoured by the larvae - the latter was thought at the time to be the explanation of their paucity. Within some of the pods larvae were found very nearly filling their interior. Upon picking the flowers apart and strewing them upon a black surface, the larvae readily left their concealment and commenced traveling over the table. The flowers were shaken several times during a half-hour, until no more larvae emerged from them. A number of the pods were then opened, but all were found deserted by the occupants which they may have contained. It is probable that the larger number of the larvae had matured and left the heads before they were received by me. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com"