146 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



moth had occurred, compare the floral conditions, and note the 

 suitable plant forms common to such stations. Working on these 

 lines many stations from Montreal, Can., to Wilmington, Del., were 

 visited, but the results led nowhere. What did appear was that 

 the great semi-tidal marsh westward of Jersey City and Hoboken, 

 N. J., yearly gave up a few of the moths, and made it apparent an 

 established colony must be flourishing in these fastnesses. The 

 flora of this region is of the usual luxuriance of an ancient marsh, 

 though modified by a considerable salinity in its lower reaches. 

 Very conspicuous are a number of giant grasses, Phragmites phrag- 

 mites, Spartina cynosuroides, Zizania aquatica, and others, which 

 are capable and fit to serve as food-plants. For many years we 

 laboured under the impression that some of these grasses must be 

 the answer to the riddle. A number of large herbaceous species 

 also occur and the field for investigation was a large one. From 

 a contemplative viewpoint this habitat offers much to be desired. 

 Many of the floral conditions here have seen little change in the 

 last piling up of centuries, certain sections remaining doubtless in 

 their pre-Columbian verdancy, and we should, theoretically at 

 least, find our larva easily. But the proximity to so great a popula- 

 tion has produced much artificiality and the region is interspersed 

 by numerous railroads that are responsible for frequent burnings. 

 The principal hinderance to a thorough search, however, is the fact 

 that the territory is wet to submergence except during very droughty 

 times. 



Our meeting with the larva of P. inqucesita in a Cryptogam, 

 in 1898, made us early mindful of the ferns, though the food- 

 plants of the genus centre principally among the Composites. 

 Light dawned in 1912 when P. stenocelis proves a fern feeder, for 

 inqucBsita, stenocelis and speciosissima are a trio aloof from the 

 allies, and it becomes clear we must now also look for the latter in 

 a fern. But what fern was peculiar to the Jersey Meadows? 

 Early in 1913 we found a young borer at work in Aspidium, at Rye, 

 but the instance did not reflect a normal operation for our desider- 

 atum. Latterly, Mr. Otto Buchholz, of Elizabeth, N. J., had 

 rendered assistance in the Jersey Meadow hunt, being close by the 

 field, and keen, through a wide experience and with a skill rarely 

 equalled, for detective work of this nature. Upon being advised 



