2 Journal New York Entomological Society. [^'o'- ^^ 



Considerably excited by the prospect, I picked up a little stick and 

 began to fish in the stew. It was half full of large caterpillars, black- 

 ened by drying, resembling dried and stewed prunes as much as any- 

 thing. One of them I pulled in two and thrust a half in my mouth to 

 see what sort of food it was. I found it tough and almost flavorless, 

 with an insipidity beyond expectation on account of the absence of 

 salt in the stew. The fat had cooked out so as to float on the fluid, 

 and had a strong odor like linseed oil, which was in fact the only 

 quality beyond toughness that I noticed. After I had performed the 

 expcrimcntiim critcis, my hostess, if I may use the term, appeared to 

 be relieved of the fear of ridicule, and brought out a cloth in which 

 she had about a quart of the dried worms, uncooked. These I bought 

 of her and brought home with me. As the stage departed about this 

 time, I secured no farther information from her about the mode of 

 preparing this food material. The description given me by Mr. 

 Mattley and also by Mr. Rector of the general store near by, was 

 to this effect : The caterpillars feed on the leaves of the yellow pine 

 (Pinus ponderosa) but not on the one-leafed pinon (Piniis mono- 

 phylla) which is much more abundant about Mono Lake. The 

 Indians collect the caterpillars by making a smudge under the tree, for 

 which purpose they make a trench rather close about the base of the 

 tree; this is presumably to guard against the spread of the fire. As 

 the thick smoke rises and envelopes the caterpillars, it causes them 

 to let go and drop to the ground, where they are collected by the 

 Indians, killed and dried. The preserved material is called Papaia. 



A few days later, while I was at Berkeley, Cal., I had a conversa- 

 tion on this subject with Mr. Roy Headley, of the Forest Service in 

 the San Francisco office. He informed me that while inspecting a 

 national forest some distance southeast of the Mono Lake basin, he 

 found every pine over a considerable hillside surrounded by a trench 

 in which there had been a fire; he examined the work with interest, 

 for fear that the forest was being subjected to an undesirable fire 

 risk. It appeared from his statement and what I learned at Mono 

 Lake that the collection of this caterpillar for food is an industry of 

 considerable importance in the territory along the Nevada-California 

 line. 



Observing that the stewed specimens, of which I had fortunately 

 saved a couple, were much fresher in appearance than the dry ones, I 



