400 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 



GRAPE. LEAVES. 



red color, with the olive inner edge wavy instead of being straight 

 as it is in the foregoing species, and on the hind wings this light 

 red border is extended to the outer angle. 



If these pretty zebra-like worms become so numerous upon the 

 vines that it is desired to exterminate them and the handsome 

 moths wiiich they produce, this object will probably be most 

 readily accomplished by picking off each leaf on which a worm 

 is found and throwing it into the fire or otherwise destroying it. 

 Mr. T. B. Ash ton, of White Creek, informs me that in 1854 he 

 found upwards of 150 of these w^orms on his vines, which being 

 destroyed, only one worm made its appearance the next year. 

 He also says, w^hen the worms leave the vines, if they can find a 

 corn cob or a piece of soft decayed wood lying on the ground, 

 they bore into it rather more than the length of their bodies, 

 closing the orifice with their chips, and there pass their pupa 

 state, in preference to burying themselves in the ground. All 

 such observations as this are of value to us, and are not matters 

 of mere idle curiosity, as ignorant persons suppose. If the fact 

 be as above stated, it occurs to me that whenever these worms are 

 noticed to be common upon the vines, their further multiplication, 

 may be arrested with the greatest facility by scattering broken 

 corn cobs upon the ground beneath, where the worms when they 

 descend from the vines will find and will enter them, and in the 

 autumn or spring following, raking these cobs together in a heap 

 and burning them. 



125. White miller, Spilosoma Virginica, Fab. (Lepidoptera. Arctiidae.) 



A large thick-bodied caterpillar two inches long, densely 

 covered with soft long hairs of a pale yellow, sometimes foxy red 

 or brownish color, its skin straw yellow, commonly with a black 

 stripe along each side, with the joints of its body and its under side 

 also blackish. This and the caterpillar of the Isabella moth 

 {Spilosoma Isabella) which has hairs much more stiff and even 

 shorn at their ends and of a fox red color and black at each end 

 of its body, are the two common large caterpillars seen everywhere 

 in the State of New-York, especially in autumn, often crawling 

 into our dwellings and spinning their cocoons behind chests and . 

 other furniture. Out of doors they place their cocoons slightly 



