March 1897] BeUTENMULLER : NOTE ON CaTOCALA ElDA. 11 



around the femora of the meso- and meta-thoracic legs, then meeting 

 on the median ventral line between them. 



As the pupa grows older the eyes, wing parts, parts of the legs and 

 antennae and the tips of the mandibles begin to turn much darker. 



Soror is especially injurious to the interests of the flower-grower. 

 The beetles eat unsightly holes in the buds and petals of roses and 

 chrysanthemums, and other showy flowers. It feeds on leaves too, and 

 is almost unrestricted in range of food-plants. Fruit-growers often suf- 

 fer serious loss by the beetle's eating the young forming fruit. The 

 apricot seems especially the object of attack. Hardly any kind of gar- 

 den vegetable is free from its attention. 



The eggs are deposited, in breeding jars or out of doors, from y^ 

 to y^ an inch below the surface of the ground, near the base of some 

 plant, sometimes singly but usually in numbers of from 20 to 50. The 

 eggs hatched in the breeding jars in about eighteen days. The larvse 

 developed slowly. Larvoe of various sizes, some full grown, some 

 newly hatched, were found around the roots of different plants out of 

 doors in March, xA.pril and May. The larvse do not bore into the roots, 

 as longicornis and 12-punctata do, but eat the roots from the outside, 

 sometimes cutting the young rootlets entirely in two. The larvse were 

 found in abundance feeding on the roots of sweet-peas and alfalfa, and 

 sparingly on other plants. 



As the larva becomes full-grown it approaches the surface of the 

 ground and forms an oval or spherical cell in which it lies ten or twelve 

 days, semi-quiescent, before pupation. The pupal stage lasts from ten to 

 fourteen days. The first out-of-doors pupae were found early in April. 



No special opportunity of combatting the pest is offered by its im- 

 mature stages. The wide range of food-plants of larva and adult, and 

 the underground life of the immature stages, make it a particularly 

 difficult insect to fisrht. 



NOTE ON CATOCALA ELDA Behr. 



By Wm. BeUTENMULLER. 



This insect was described as a distinct species from a specimen 

 taken in Oregon. Since then three examples have been taken in British 

 Columbia, and last summer Mr. Doll raised a single specimen from a 

 larva found on Long Island, N. Y. It is, without doubt, nothing more 

 than a gray variety of C. relicta. Mr. Palm already called attention 

 to this fact. (Journ. N. Y. Ent. Soc, I, p. 21.) 



