3IO 



AN ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. 



closely resembled the cranberry stems and twigs that even to an 

 entomologist they were at first invisible. 



The balance of" the Lcpidoptera are classed in a general way as 

 " micro," or small, although as a matter of fact many of them 

 are larger than some of the " macros." Yet, as a rule, the fam- 

 ilies contain small, and sometimes very small, forms. 



At the head of this aggregation is placed the superfamily 

 Pyralididce, which contains species of moderate size, varying 

 greatly in appearance. We have one series, the Pyraustidce, 

 with slender bodies and rather thinly scaled w'ings. The pri- 

 maries are banded, the secondaries are moderate in size, never 

 larger than the fore-wings, and the colors are, as a rule, pale, 

 usually a light clay-yellow, while the markings, which are wavy, 

 are yellowish brown or black. The caterpillars in this series are 

 nearly always green, with pale stripes and spots ; sometimes 

 without any markings at all. The head is either black or yellow, 

 hard and shining, and there is a hard shield of the same color as 

 the head on the first thoracic segment. Most of them have the 

 abdominal legs crowned with a complete circlet of spines, and bv 

 this character, which is an easy one to see, we can tell with al- 

 most absolute certainty the caterpillar of a micro from that of 

 a macro, in which the circlet of hooks is never complete, if we 

 except the Hepialidcs and CossidcF, which will not confuse us, on 

 account of their great size and wood-boring habits. The pro- 

 legs are complete, — that is to say, there are four pairs, — and the 



Fig. 354. 



The piLkk-iiuitli, Alaigaronia nitidalis , a.nd its larva; the latter shown on a small 

 Liieumber which had been eaten into at b. 



insects have, therefore, no appearance of or relation to the 

 loopers, or Geomefridce. Many, perhaps most, of the caterpillars 

 are silk- spinners, and often live more or less concealed in folded 

 leaves held together by a few threads, or in tubes above or under 



