236 Bulletin 133, 



moths by the conspicuous white spot in the center of each front 

 wing. It was doubtless this distinctive mark that suggested the 

 specific name of the insect — uiiiptiyina. 



Historical. 



Its general distribution and early history. — Apparently the 

 native home of the army-worm is in North America, although it 

 is known to occur in England, South America, India, Java, 

 Maderia, Australia and New Zealand, thus making it nearly a 

 cosmopolitan insect. However, it is known as an especially 

 injurious insect only in the United States, east of the Rocky 

 Mountains and in Canada. ' ' The region in which it especially 

 flourishes extends from Iowa to Maine and from Texas to Ala- 

 bama. East of the Blue Ridge Mountains its southerly range as 

 an injurious species extends to North Carolina. The moth is 

 often captured outside these limits and frequently in considerable 

 numbers, but the caterpillar does not seem elsewhere to be a factor 

 in agriculture." 



What has come to be recognized as the first published account 

 of this insect is quoted on the title page below the frontispiece. 

 1743 is always mentioned as the first army -worm year of which 

 we have pretty definite proof. Perhaps it was the army-worm 

 that appeared by the millions in Massachusetts in 1762 and ate up 

 the corn. Graphic and definite accounts have been recorded of 

 the ravages of the insect in New England in 1770 and 1790. The 

 next army- worm year was in 1817, and since 1825 the insect has 

 appeared in injurious numbers somewhere in the United States 

 almost every year ; but rarely, if ever, has the insect been 

 destructive in the same locality in two successive years. 



The army- worm was known in the early chronicles as "the 

 black worm;" just when it came to be known as "the army- 

 worm" we have not ascertained. Sometime in the latter part of 

 the eighteenth century, a specimen of the adult insect — the moth — 

 found its way into the then celebrated collection of a Mr. Fran- 

 cillon in London. Upon the breaking up and sale of that col- 

 lection early in this century, this moth passed into the possession 

 of a Mr. Haworth, who published a description of it in 1810; he 

 named it U7iipuncta, the white speck. 



