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a ladder to catch all that he could reach on the Arbor vitas, 

 but this did not much reduce their numbers, for in the early 

 part of August, the whole tree was alive with them, and I had 

 to give an hour or two every fair day to killing them ; but, as 

 this could be done only by crushing their pods singly with the 

 thumb and finger, it was slow and tedious work. On the sixth 

 of August I left home for an excursion to Maine and the White 

 Mountains. Before leaving home, I charged the boys to kill all 

 the drop-worms they could find on the upper half of the tree. 

 Upon my return on the seventeenth, I found they had done as 

 directed ; but the tree at the top, for the distance of six feet 

 downwards, was now entirelv bare of leaves, and the foliage be- 



' _ .' ~ 



low was becoming very thin. There must have been millions 

 of the drop- worms on the tree, it seemed to me, to have done all 

 the damage, for the insects were still very small, few of their 

 pods being more than three fourths of an inch long. I have 

 continued killing the insects, and still have many left ; but 

 owing to the rains, or the cool weather, or both, they have 

 not grown fast, and only one pod has been seen of full size, 

 and probably the greater part will be arrested by the frost 

 and by cold weather before they have come to their growth. 



I have a single specimen of a moth which I suppose to have 

 come from a saddle-worm. The head, thorax and fore wings 

 are pea-green, the latter with a triangular spot on the middle 

 of the front margin, and with the broad outer edge brown 

 or nankin color, as are the abdomen, hind wings and short, 

 pectinated antennae. The specimen is a male. 



The Limacodes that you have sketched in your last letter is 

 the pithecium. Though generally very rare here, it has 

 occasionally been seen in considerable numbers. One of my 

 agricultural friends. told me of a swarm of these which once 

 appeared on a cherry tree, and nearly stripped it of leaves. 

 It is very singular that this larva casts off spontaneously the 

 long, flattened and velvet-like projections on the sides of its 



