204 ORCHARDS. 



and especially the dwarf apple or pear. This is a very im- 

 portant fact to fruit-raisers, whose orchards or gardens are 

 infested by these stealth}^, naked caterpillars, who do all their 

 mis^^hief under cover of night, which accounts for their never 

 having been noticed in their work of destruction in former 

 years. After having performed their nightly work, they de- 

 scend and take quarters just under the surface of the ground 

 near the foot of the tree. They seldom descend the tree as 

 they ascend it, by crawling, and it is quite interesting to 

 watch one at early morn when it has become full fed, and the 

 tender skin seemed ready to burst from repletion, and see it 

 prepare by a certain twist of the body for the fall. This fact 

 also accounts for trees on hard, tenacious soil being compara- 

 tively exempt from them, as their instinct doubtless serves 

 them a good turn either in preventing them from ascending 

 or by leading the parent moth to deposit her eggs by prefer- 

 ence on a light soil. 



Mr. J. AV. Cochran, of Calumet, Illinois, says: 

 "They destroy low-branched fruit trees of all kinds, except 

 the peach, feeding on the fruit buds first, the wood buds as a 

 second choice, and preferring them to all other things, tender 

 grape buds and shoots (to which they are also partial) not 

 excepted — the miller always preferring to lay her eggs near 

 the hill or mound over the roots of the trees in the orchard; 

 and if, as is many times the case, the trees have a spring- 

 dressing of lime or ashes Avith the view of preventing the 

 May beetles' operations, this Avill be selected with unerring 

 instinct by the miller, thus giving her larva a fine warm bed 

 to cover themselves up in during the day from the observa- 

 tions of their enemies. They will leave potatoes, peas and 

 all other young green things for the buds of the apple and 

 pear. The long naked young trees of the orchard are almost 

 exempt from their voracious attacks, but I have found them 

 about midnight, of a dark and damp night, well up in the 

 limbs of these." 



Mr. John Townley, of Marquet county. Miss., in the 

 Practical Entomologist, sa}s: "On a warm dewy night, 

 about the middle of May, I took a lamp and, going into the 



