EXPERIMENT STATION REPORT. 



585 





over one and one-half inches in Icngtli, quite a stout, though by no 

 means a chunky caterpillar, livid, whitish brown, without stripes, with 

 some blackish tubercles, bearing tufts of short bristles, the head and 

 anterior feet black. In. that stage, if in corn or tomatoes at all, it is 

 far down in the stalk, and any infested plants then found have either 

 outgrown the injury, as in corn, or have little or no crop, as is usual 

 in tomatoes. 



It is rare that the l)oror is found in large fields of either corn' or 

 tomatoes, and it is usually the garden or the small field that suffers 

 most. Nearly or quite thirty years ago, when 

 Dr. C. V. Riley wrote of this species in the 

 Missouri reports, its injuries were of the same 

 character and of the same irregular occurrence. 

 The life history, as then written, has been copied 

 ever since, with little variation and no question 

 even in very recent bulletins. 



When the caterpillar reaches its full growth, 

 in August, it changes to a dark, chestnut-brown 

 pupa, either in the infested plant, near the sur- 

 face of the ground, or in the soil close to it. 

 The moths begin to appear about the 10th of 

 September, and are modest, mouse-gray in color, 

 with lighter powderings, and a pale, transverse 

 shading across the outer part of the wing — 

 much Ijetter marked in some specimens than in 

 others. The figure (34) shows the general ap- 

 pearance and average size fairly well, while the 

 caterpillar, not much more than half grown, is 

 somewhat enlarged. Dr. Riley believed that the 

 moth lived through the winter and laid its eggs 

 in the spring, as many of these Noctuid moths 

 do, and so he stated without having actually seen the eggs. This 

 statement was accepted as a fact and has since been repeated as such, 

 instead of a mere probability. 



When seeking for a means of checking the injury caused I was led 

 to question the accepted period of egg-laying, and wrote to all my 

 entomological friends of whom I believed that they might be able to 

 give definite information, but no one had actually seen the insect 

 deposit its eggs and no definite information was available. At my 



7lf 



Fig. 25. 



Work of the stalk borer in 

 tomato viues. Original. 



