8 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



years. Early in the first crop I have found a small white worm about as 

 large as a small hair-pin and perhaps half an inch long boring in from the 

 underside of the melon which destroys the melon, to the extent of nine- 

 tenths of the crop, but this small white worm disappears during the first 

 dry hot weather and the small semi-transparent spotted worm [E. 7iitidalis\ 

 attacks the melons on the shaded sides, tops or bottom. This spotted 

 worm grows rapidly into a much larger one of a light green color with 

 scarcely a trace of the spots on the smaller one. Whether the very small 

 worm is the same as the one that bores later on and grows to a larger 

 green worm, ii4 inch or more in length, I do not know. Can you 

 suggest a remedy? I have apphed salt under the early crop that kills 

 this small white worm but does not appear to hinder the larger green one. 

 To give an idea of the destruction this little pest causes, the two worms 

 sent were cut out of a cantaloupe that weighs 34^ lbs. that would bring 

 in our market 50 cts. each. But for these destructive worms we could reap 

 large crops of this melon, and it pays even now to grow them. 



Pendleton, S. C. J. C. S. 



Resemblance of the Larva to Another Species. 



As the moth was obtained from only one of the two caterpillars sub- 

 mitted for examination, it is not possible to say if they were both of the 

 same species, or if one may not have been of the closely allied species, 

 Eudioptis hyalifiata, to be noticed in subsequent pages. Judging from 

 the published descriptions, and in consideration of the different features, 

 especially colorational, that they present at different stages of growth, it 

 seems hardly possible to distinguish between them, except with examples 

 of the two in hand, from the same food-plant, and at the same degree of 

 development. Several writers have remarked upon their liabiHty to 

 variation in color, dependent upon their food-plant. This uncertainty is 

 unfortunate, for they are both quite destructive to several of the Cucur- 

 bitaceffi — cucumbers, melons, and occasionally to pumpkins and 

 squashes — and reliable recommendations of methods for arresting their 

 ravages must of necessity be based upon a knowledge of the entire life- 

 history of the insect, or at least that of the larval stage. For example, it 

 is important to know definitely if there is but one brood of each or more. 

 If the latter, are the habits different in the successive broods ? Does the 

 first brood attack the foliage and the second the fruit ? When and 

 where are the eggs deposited? Do the species occur simultaneously in 

 the same field ? 



A careful study of the larvje and carrying them to their winged stage 

 is a present desideratum. While a child could readily distinguish 

 between the moths of the two, so markedly distinct are they in their 

 appearance, it is doubtful if any entomologist could from his knowledge 

 identify, beyond question, a collection of South Carolina Eudioptis cater- 

 pillars, in different ages, submitted to him. 



