18 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
Records. Some of the incidents of the year, so far as North 
America are concerned, are also recorded in my annual report 
as U. S. Entomologist. Yet it may be interesting to briefly re- 
fer to a few facts that have characterized the year just closed and 
that are sufficiently interesting to warrant comment. 
On May zoth, Prof. A. J. Cook sent me some Noctuid larvae about 
one-third grown, which were appearing in vast bodies, like the 
Army Worm, in parts of Michigan. While resembling most the 
darker forms of the larva of Laphygma frugiperda Sm. & 
Abb., they yet differed and did not fully correspond with any of 
the numerous Noctuid larvae known to me. The species subse- 
quently, upon being reared to the imago by Prof. Cook, proved 
to be Agrotis fennica Treitschke, and, as subsequent reports 
showed, was abundant and destructive over a wide area and par- 
ticularly in the Ottawa district in Canada. The larval history 
of the species had not previously been known ; neither had the 
species been counted as among our injurious insects. It is widely 
distributed, occurring in all parts of the Northern States and on 
the Pacific. The worm first appeared in April, and the destruc- 
tive brood in May was probably a second brood. Prof. Cook 
gives a good account of it with very poor figures in his t; Notes 
from the Entomological Laboratory of the Michigan Agricultural 
College," published independently and without date. It seems 
to be a general feeder, though affecting principally grass, clover 
and strawberries. 
Almost every year some species scarcely heard of before thus 
becomes conspicuous, and this sudden and wide-spread appearance 
of a species not previously noticeable is one of the most interesting 
phenomena presented for our consideration, and I have discussed 
it in a paper on " New Insects Injurious to Agriculture," read at 
the Cincinnati meeting of the A. A. A. S. in 1881, part of the 
abstract of which is in these words : 
" These new destructive species may either be (i) recently in- 
troduced species from some foreign countrv, (2) native species 
hitherto unobserved or unrecorded, and new in the sense of not be- 
ing described, or (3) native species well known to entomologists, 
but not previously recorded as injurious. 
kt The author argues that in the last two categories, more par- 
ticularly, we frequently have to deal with newly-acquired habits, 
