:^8 



Fig. 16. The Dark-sided Cutworm 

 {Euxoa 7nessoria), larva and adult. Nat- 

 ural size. 



Although one of the great destruc- 

 tive cutworms of the United States, 

 this species is not reported as particu- 

 larly injurious to corn. It is one of the 

 climbing cutworms, and its most noto- 

 rious injuries are done to fruits and 

 garden vegetables. It is charged with 

 a great destruction of the peach crop 

 in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan in 

 1887, and with devouring about half 

 the onion crop of Orange, N. J., in 

 1885 and 1887, and again in 1896. In 

 California it was held responsible in 

 large part for the defoliation of grape- 

 vines in Fresno county. Smith speaks of it as the most injurious cut- 

 worm in southern New Jersey, especially to sweet potatoes. It ascends 

 fruit-trees, the apple especially, and eats the buds of both flowers and 

 leaves. It feeds, besides, on cabbage, spinach, lettuce, potatoes, toma- 

 toes, beans, peas, radishes, turnips, tobacco, and sugar-beets. Specimens 

 in confinement have freely eaten grass, corn, clover, buckwheat, cur- 

 rant, soft maple leaves, and various fleshy weeds. Indeed, it is so gen- 

 eral a feeder, Gillette remarks, that in confinement it has not refused to 

 eat any green thing offered it. 



This species is not particularly common in Illinois, and has been 

 rather infrequent in our collections either as caterpillar or as moth. It 

 has been reported injurious, however, from New York to California and 

 Washington state, and northward into Canada. It seems to be com- 

 paratively rare to the southward. 



It is evidently a single-brooded species, the caterpillars being most 

 abundant in May and disappearing by the middle of June. Occasionally 

 adults (Fig. 16, b) occur in the latter part of June, but the main body of 

 them appear late in July, and are most abundant in Sei^tember up to 

 about the 20th. The stage of hibernation is not yet positively ascer- 

 tained. Caterpillars, apparently of this species, were taken by me from 

 the stomachs of robins shot in February and March, and the species 

 probably hibernates in the larval stage. 



Highly satisfactory experiments for the destruction of this species 

 and the protection of garden crops have been made by Sirrine; in New 

 York, who used a mixture of twenty or thirty pounds of middlings or 

 bran — the former preferred — to one of Paris green. A continuous row 

 of this poisoned bait was laid along the ground by means of a seed-drill. 



