103 FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



insufi&cient for them, aud two days later the larger number were found 

 dead. 



Some of the larvge were sent by me to Prof. Riley, at Washington. 

 They were at once identified by him as a species with which he had 

 been familiar in Missouri, and from which he had bred the moth 

 known as Nephelodes violans Gueu. He had found it extremely diffi- 

 cult to rear in confinement, and only after repeated failures was he success- 

 ful in carrying the caterpillars through to their perfect stage. In a 

 recent reference to the caterpillar, as having been found in the stomach 

 of a blue-bird shot in Normal, 111., he had characterized it as " the 

 bronzed cut- worm." 



Description of the Larva. 



Prof. Riley, in compliance with my request for such of his MS. 

 notes as he might spare me for publication, has kindly sent me the 

 following description of the early stages of the caterpillar : 



"The larva in Ms, first stage is bright green with the head pale gamboge-yellow, 

 the cervical shield of the same color, and the three narrow dorsal pale lines and 

 broader stigmatal pale stripe almost white, and not showing on the plates. The 

 intermediate faint line between the subdorsal and stigmatal stripes is obsolete, 

 and the space between all the lines is more nearly equal than in the last stage, 

 the stigmatal stripe extending above the stigmata where later it becomes purely 

 substigmatal. In the second fi&ge there is little change, but in the third the 

 lines show through the plates which become darker. Tlie piliferous spots 

 which subsequently become subobsolete are in the earlier stages dark and more 

 conspicuous and normal, and the front prolegs are never atrophied." 



The following description of the young larva, giving mainly colora- 

 tional features not contained in the above, and also of the mature 

 form, is published by Prof. Riley in vol. xv of the Ainericmi Natu- 

 ralist^ pp. 576-7. 



" The young larva is green but early shows the pale stripes. When about one- 

 third grown the general hue is olive-green with the cervical and anal plates but 

 little darker. The head is pale greenish, faintly freckled, and with a few dark 

 hairs; the sutures pale, the mandibles tinged with blood-red, and brown at ex- 

 tremities, and the ocelli distinct on a pale ground, the second and third from 

 below, black, the others light. The three dorsal stripes and the narrower supra- 

 stigmal line are very pale greenish-yellow, the broader substigmatal stripe of a 

 clearer cream-yellow with a faint carneous tint. 



"■Mature larva : — Larger specimens fully 1.9 inch long, largest in the middle 

 of the body and tapering slightly each way, especially toward anus. Color, 

 brownish-bronze, the surface faintly corrugulate but polished, the piliferous 

 spots obsolete. A darker, highly polished cervical shield and anal plate. A 

 medio-dorsal and subdorsal stripe of a buff, or dull flesh-color, each stripe of 

 about equal diameter (nearly 0.04 inch on middle joints), forming narrower, paler 

 lines on the plates and nearly converging on the anal plate ; a similar but some- 

 what broader substigmatal stripe which is wavy below ; between subdorsal and 



