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The Home of Seirarctia Echo. 



By Annie Trumbull Slosson. 



In the Spring of 1888 I was so fortunate as to capture at Punta 

 Gorda, Charlotte Harbor, Florida, two specimens of Seirarctia echo 

 A. & S. I had known the moth previously only by the meagre descrip- 

 tion and accompanying plaie in Insects of Georgia ; and few of the 

 entomologists to whom I showed my specimens had ever seen the species. 

 Mr. Henry Edwards thought the fact of this capture worthy of a note in 

 Ent. Amer. , and I was ve'y proud of my treasures. 



In February of the present year I was again in Florida, at Ormond, 

 on the Halifax River. T he hotel is situated on a strip of land, from a 

 half to three-quarters of a mile in width, between river and ocean, called 

 locally "the peninsula." A few evenings after my arrival there I took 

 upon a lighted window a fine specimen of S. echo. The next night 

 another flew into the reading room. Soon afterward in a walk through 

 the woods I found two or three others, apparentl}- just emerged. In the 

 midst of my excitement over these captures I met an intelligent resident 

 of the town, and spoke of what I had found, their interest and rarity. 

 The lady looked surprised and exclaimed: "Why, you surely cannot 

 mean our common moth that comes from the army worm!' I had, 

 previous to this, heard much of a very destructive caterpillar of the pen- 

 insula, which travelled in vast armies, devouring all in its path. And 

 now I was to learn that this dreaded pest was the larva of the beautiful 

 moth, so rare in collections, Abbott and Smith's echo. I talked with 

 many of the Ormond people on this subject, and collected many facts. 

 These larva; overrun the whole peninsula and do great damage to garden 

 plants. They are an annual pest, but in certain years are greatly m- 

 creased in numbers. All my informants agree upon one point, that 

 these larva; invariably travel towards the north, and are never seen 

 heading towards any other point of the compass. So well is this under- 

 stood that, in protecting their gardens from the ravages of these cater- 

 pillars the inhabitants dig trenches on the south, east and west sides of 

 the ground, leaving the north side open ; and none ever enter from that 

 direction. A lady writes : " My father built a sand-wall about a foot 

 high around the south and east sides of our place, with the perpendicular 

 side out, and it kept them out for a good while, until they undermined 

 it by constant crawling up and down in an endless procession, determ- 

 ined to get by. He had no wall on the north side, but not a worm 

 came in." She also writes, "They eat everything, almost, — except 

 orange trees — but their favorite food is anything growing from a bulb, 



Entomologica Americana. Vol V. 1 August 1889. 



