A. E. Verrill — The Bermuda Islands. 



777 



young or half-grown cucumbers, often doing much damage, is also 

 said to occur here, but we did not obtain specimens. The larva? also 

 bore in melons and squashes, like those of the preceding species. 



Sweet-potato Fire-worm. (Hymenia fascialis.) Figures 138, 139. 



According to the notes of Miss ' Victoria Hay ward the Sweet 

 Potato vines in midsummer are often very badly damaged hy the 

 green larva? of a small pyralid moth called the "fireworm." It eats 

 out the parenchyma, quickly reducing the leaf to a skeleton. 



Some of these larva? which were mailed to me by her at Bermuda. 

 August 8th, had become pupa? when they reached me, August 12th ; 

 on the 13th the imago emerged from one of them. Thus the dura- 

 tion of the pupa stage may be as short as four or five days. 



138 



Figure 138.— Sweet-potato Fireworm Moth ; leaf as skeletonized by the larvae ; 

 a, b, c, pupae; d, moth, xl^'. Figure 139.— The same; a, moth: b, c, 

 pupse, x2f. Phot, by A. H. V., 1902, from life. 



This small moth is rather prettily marked. The ground-color of 

 the body and wings above is coppery-brown, with white markings ; 

 front of head and a ring behind the eyes white ; abdomen crossed 

 by five or six bars of white, the two anterior wider ; under side 

 buff, with three rows of black spots. Both pairs of wings are 

 crossed by a nearly median bar of white, which, when the wings are 

 folded, runs directly across in a straight line, coincident with the 

 basal white bar of the abdomen, but does not quite reach the costal 

 margins of the fore wings, ending in a point, with a subtenninal, 

 angular, hook-like projection, directed backward ; midway between 

 this white bar and the apex of the wing is a white transverse spot, 

 bordered with black, and reaching the edge of the wing, with a few 

 specks df white at its inner end, and a blackish patch beyond it ; 



