The Moths and Butterflies 407 



In California is found a pretty pale-brownish moth that flutters weakly 

 about the live-oak trees in early summer and late autumn, which has the 

 distinction of being the only North American species in the family Dioptidae. 

 The larvae of this moth feed chiefly on the leaves of the live-oaks and white 

 oaks in the California valleys and the species may be called the live-oak 

 moth, Phryganidia calif ornica (Fig. 589). The moths expand about i inch 

 and are uniformly pale brownish, with thinly scaled and hence almost trans- 

 lucent wings. The male has a small yellowish-white ill-defined blotch on 

 the center of each fore wing. The eggs are laid by the early summer brood 

 of moths on the under side of the leaves of the oaks and the naked light- 

 yellowish black-striped larvae feed until October ist on the tough leaves. 

 Then they crawl down to the tree-trunks or to near-by fences or logs and 

 change to a naked greenish-white or yellowish chrysalid with many black 

 lines and blotches. The moths issue in from ten to twelve days after pupa- 

 tion and lay their eggs again on the oak-leaves. But here is a curious fact. 

 All the eggs laid on white-oak leaves by these autumn moths are doomed 

 to death because just at the hatching-time the white-oak leaves fall and dry. 

 The live-oak retains its leaves all winter and the larvae hatched on them 

 feed and grow slowly through the winter, pupating in May and issuing as 

 moths about June ist. Thus each year about one-fourth of the eggs laid 

 by this species are wasted. The larvae from the eggs laid on the white oaks 

 in the spring live because they have white-oak leaves all summer to feed 

 on, but those of the fall brood which hatch on the white oaks all die. In 

 some seasons this insect is so abundant as to defoliate the oak-trees in cer- 

 tain localities twice during the year, but whenever the caterpillars get so 

 numerous a certain small slender ichneumon-fly, Pimpla behrendsii, which 

 lives parasitically on them becomes also very abundant (there being plenty 

 of food for its young) and soon checks the increase of the moth. Out of 

 144 chrysalids of the moth which I once gathered but n moths issued, 

 99 of the chrysalids giving forth ichneumon-flies and the rest dying from 

 other causes. I have found the caterpillar most abundant on the live-oaks 

 (Q. agrijolia), but it occurs also on Q. lobata, Q. kelloggii, Q. dumosa, and 

 Q. douglassi, Q. chrysolepsis. 



A family represented in this country by only four species is the Peri- 

 copidae. Three of these species are found only in the western states, the 

 fourth in Florida. The single species of the four at all familiar to collectors 

 is the beautiful and abundant Gnophcela latipennis, with its two or three 

 varieties. This moth expands about 2 inches and is black, with two 

 large white blotches on the fore wing, each blotch subdivided by the black 

 veins running through it and single large blotch on the hind wing. A 

 variety common in California has the blotches smaller and pale yellowish. 



The wood-nymph moths, Agaristidae, of which about two dozen species 



