154 Entomology: 
ZOOLOGY. 
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Ant. XIII. Description of the Pkalaena Devastator, (the In» 
sect that produces the Cut-worm,) communicated for the 
American Journal of Science, §c. by Mr. Joun P. Brack, 
of Litchfield, Conn. 
TE HIS moth, whose larva is one of our most destructive ene 
mies, belongs to the Linneean family noctua, in the genus pha- 
Jaena. Its specific characters are as follow: Wings incum- 
bent and horizontal, when at rest ; body long and thin; thorax 
thick, but nof crested ; head small; eyes prominent and black; 
antennes setaceous, gradually lessening towards extremities 
and slightly ciliated; palpi two, flat, broad in the middle, and 
very hairy; tongue rolled up between them, not very promi- 
nent; clypeus small, fegs long, small and hairy ; wings long a 
body; under wings shortest; colour a dark silvery gray; with 
transverse dotted bands of black on upper wings. The insect 
lays its eggs in the commencement of autumn, at the roots of 
trees and near the ground: they are hatched early in May- 
The habits of the cut-worm have been often and fully detailed. 
They eat almost all kinds of vegetables, preferring beans, cab- 
bages and corn. They continue in this state about four weeksi 
they then cast their skin and enter the pupa state, under 
ground. This is a crustaceous covering, fitted to the pars af 
the future insect. In this they continue for four weeks longer 
and come out in the fly or insect state, about the middle of Ju- 
ly. All those chrysalids that I exposed to the sun, died ; # 
all those that were kept cool under the earth, produced am in 
sect: hence I infer, that the heat of the sun will kill the chry* 
lids. If, then, the ground be ploughed about the first of July : 
many of those insects might be destroyed, and the destruction 
of the productions of the next year prevented ; for the pup“ 
never more than a few inches under ground. 
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