340 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



very warm and unusually dry, which accounts for the unusual 

 increase in this insect. 



This insect, well known in Europe, whence it has been car- 

 ried all over the civilized world, was first noticed in this country 



by Dr. Fitch in 1855, who gives an 

 accountof it in his " First and Second 

 Reports," &c, having observed it in Il- 

 linois, but not in New York. He called 

 FlG 5 it Cerostoma brassicella, but it is un- 



cabbage Web Moth. doubtedly the well known European 



Plutella xylostella Linn. (Fig. 5, moth and cocoon). Though the 

 insect has been observed in this country only late in the autumn 

 when the cabbages have headed, yet these worms, as Dr. Fitch 

 suggests, probably belong to a second brood. Stainton, in his 

 " Manual of British Butterflies and Moths," states that the 

 moths fly in May and August, while the caterpillars appear in 

 June, July, and a second brood again in September. Dr. Fitch 

 suspects that the first brood of caterpillars may feed on the 

 young cabbage plants in early summer, and thus do more mis- 

 chief than in the autumn when the heads are fully formed. 



The caterpillar is a little pale green worm, with small, stiff, 

 dark hairs scattered over the body ; it is a quarter of an inch 

 long. When about to transform it spins a beautiful open net- 

 work of silk as a cocoon, open at one end, of white silken 

 threads ; it is a third of an inch long. 



The moth itself is pale gray, with the head, palpi and antennae 

 white, but the latter are ringed alternately with white and gray 

 on the outer half. The rest of the body is gray, except on the 

 under side, and on the middle of the thorax, where there is a 

 broad, white, longitudinal band, which when the wings are folded 

 is continuous with the white band along the inner side of the 

 wings. The two front pair of legs are gray, with the tarsal 

 joints ringed narrowly with white ; the hind legs are whitish and 

 hairy. The fore wings are gray, with a conspicuous broad, lon- 

 gitudinal, white band along the inner edge, and extending to the 

 outer third of the wing ; this band sends out three teeth towards 

 the middle of the wing, the third tooth being at the end of the 

 band. There is a row of dark dots along the outer edge of the 

 stripe ; a row of blackish dots along a pale shade just outside of 



