162 Bulletin 190. 



Their irciienil color varies from a woo(l-l)rown tlirono:li cinnamon to 

 russet; tlie hind wings and all four wings beneath are of a lightei* 

 yellowish-brown color. Many fine, wavy, transverse, dark brown 

 lines occur on the front wings, showing more distinctly in the male. 

 And extending obli<|uely across these wings is a broad, dark brown 

 band, more or less obsolete in the middle, and there is a sub- 

 apical spot of the same color on each front wing. Many purplish 

 scales often occur in these dark bands. The front wings of the 

 female moth are not so distinctly marked as in the male (as shown 

 in figure 10) and sometimes there is a female with darker, russet- 

 brown Avinofs, as shown at d fin the same fior;ure.^ 



We placed several of the moths in cages on strawberry plants and 

 on the night of June 21th eggs were laid, not on the plants, as one 

 would suppose, but on the smooth, glass sides of the cage. The 

 thin, oval, light lemon-yellow eggs were glued to the glass in 

 clusters of more than a hundred, and they overlapped each other 

 not unlike shingles on a house. The eggs are well shown in figure 

 38. The shell is finely reticulated, the micropyle showing plainly 

 at one end. This stage of the insect had not been seen before. 

 The fact that the moths never laid their eggs on the plants in our 

 cages, leads us to suspect that in the field they oviposit on smooth 

 substances like stones or perhaps more likely upon the stems of 

 straw or other materials used for a mulch. The eo^g stage lasted 

 ten days, hatching on July 6th. 



The newly-hatched caterpillars were light yellow in color with a 

 brown head, and they readily found their way onto the plants where 

 they fed mostly on the under sides of the leaves, skeletonizing small 



*The two sexes were first described as distinct species (the male as ohsoletana, 

 and the female as iransiturana in 1863). They were again so described under 

 dilTerent names in 1865 and 1889, but in 1862, Fernald suspected they were but 

 sexual forms of one species, and in 1883, Forbes first demonstrated this by 

 breeding experiments. For references, see foot-note, p. 159. The insect is 

 known to occur in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, 

 Texas, Illinois, and ]\Iontana, and is thus widely distributed in the United States. 



Forbes called the insect the " Plain Strawberry Leaf-roller," but we prefer to 

 connect the popidar name more closel}'- with the scientific name, suggestive of 

 the o])Soletc portion of the dark band across the wings, thus : Cacmcia ohsoletana, 

 the Obsolete-banded Strawbeiry Leaf-roller. 



