LEPIDOrTERA. 353 



the irrain was threshed. According to him, it liad been known 

 for years in the western part of New York; and it was not so 

 mnch the new appearance of the insect, as its increase, which 

 had caused alarm respecting it.* Mr. Nathaniel Sill, of War- 

 ren, Pennsylvania, has given a somewhat different description 

 of it.f On threshing his winter-wheat, immediately after har- 

 vest, he found among the screenings a vast army of this new 

 enemy. He says that it was a caterpillar, about three eighths 

 of an inch in length, when fully grown, and 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 witii 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 npon 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 transformations. Mr. Elijah Wood, of 

 Winthrop, Maine, says that the chrysalis has been observed in 

 the chaff late in the fall. J 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 1840 ; 

 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 Col- 



• "The Cultivator," Vol. VI., p. 43. f "The Cultivator," Vol. VI., p. 21. 

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



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