446 INSECTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



apparently of a straw-color ; but, when seen through a magnifier, 

 was found to be striped lengthwise with orange and cream color. 

 Its head was dark brown. It was provided with legs, could 

 suspend itself by a thread, and resembled a caterpillar in all its 

 motions. This insect ought not to be confounded with the 

 smaller worms found by Mr. Sill in the upper joints of the stems 

 of the wheat, and within the kernels, until their identity has been 

 proved by further observations. It appears highly probable that 

 Mr. Gaylord's and Mr. Sill's wheat-caterpillars are the same, 

 notwithstanding the difference in their color. Insects, of the 

 same size as these caterpillars, and of a brownish color, have 

 been found in various parts of Maine, where they have done much 

 injury to the grain. Unlike the maggots of the wheat-fly, with 

 which they have been confounded, they remain depredating upon 

 the ears of the grain until after the time of harvest. Immense 

 numbers of them have been seen upon barn-floors, where the 

 grain has been threshed, but they'soon crawl away, and conceal 

 themselves in crevices, where they probably undergo their trans- 

 formations. Mr. Elijah Wood, of Winthrop, Maine, says that 

 the chrysalis has been observed in the ehaff late in the fall.* A 

 gentleman, from the southern part of Penobscot county, informs 

 me that he winnowed out nearly a bushel of these insects from 

 his wheat, in the autumn of 18 10 ; and he confirms the statements 

 of others, that these worms devour the grain when in the milk, 

 and also after it has become hard. In the autumn of 1838, the 

 Rev. Henry Colman observed the same insect in the town of 

 Egremont, in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. It was separ- 

 ated from the wheat, in great quantities, by threshing and win- 

 nowing the grain, f These wheat-worms, or wheat-caterpillars, 

 as they ought to be called, if the foregoing accounts really refer 

 to the same kind of insect, are supposed by some persons to be 

 identical with the clover-worms, which have been found in clover, 

 in various parts of the country, and have often been seen spinning 

 down from lofts and mows where clover has been stowed away.J 



* " New England Farmer," Vol. XVII., p. 73. 



t " Second Report on the Agriculture of Massachusetts," p. 99. 



} " New England Fanner," Vol. XVII., p. 73. 



