FIELD BOOK OF INSECTS. 



just before it pupates, the larva bores a hole in the stalk so 

 that the adult may easily escape. Adults emerge about 

 August, there being but one annual generation. 



Sanderson, in his Insect Pests of Farm, 



Heliothis Garden, and Orchard, and others use the 



armiger 



specific name obsoleta for this species 



(Plate LII). Holland remarks: 'This insect, which is 

 known to English entomologists as the 'Scarce Bordered 

 Straw, ' is unfortunately not scarce in the United States, 

 and, being of a singularly gluttonous habit in the larval 

 stage, has become the object of execration to farmers and 

 horticulturists." It has been called the Corn Ear- worm, 

 Tomato Fruit- worm, Tobacco Bud- worm, and Cotton 

 Boll- worm, in reference to some of its various food habits. 

 The color and markings of the adults are variable, some 

 being yellowish white, with nearly no markings, while 

 others are dull green. The larvag are also variable: light 

 green, reddish brown, or almost black; spotted, striped, or 

 plain. Pupation occurs at the bottom of an underground 

 cell which is like a half-U, the upper end being near the 

 surface of the ground but not at the point where the larva 

 entered; there is no cocoon. There are two annual genera- 

 tions in the North but there may be five or six along the 

 Gulf. In the North, winter is usually passed as a pupa. 

 When feeding on young corn, the larvae eat the leaves but 

 later they feed on the tender ears and sometimes do as 

 much as $50,000,000 damage a year in this way. When 

 feeding on tomatoes, they prefer the green or just ripening 

 fruit. When feeding on tobacco, they are called the False 

 Bud-worm to distinguish them from the True Bud-worm 

 (Chloridea virescens); as such they eat not only the flower- 

 stalks and seed-pods but also the precious leaves. Not 

 finally but for the sake of stopping somewhere, they do 

 about $20,000,000 damage, annually, to cotton by boring 

 into the bolls. In the North, winter plowing kills many 

 of the pupae, and, in the South, cotton may be protected 

 by sowing trap-crops of corn, but everywhere the best 

 plan with this, as with other insect pests, is to send an 

 S. O. S. to your State Entomologist or to the United States 

 Department of Agriculture for special information and 



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