THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



There is a worm very similar to the "yellow-necked 

 ■worm," which feeds exclusively upon Hickory and Wal- 

 nut, and differs chiefly in having no yellow neck and in 

 often Wanting the yellowish stripes. Respecting this last 

 Bee the answer to Samuel S. Lacy, Michigan, in No. U of 

 the Practical Entomologist. Unlike the "yellow-neck- 

 ed worm," it cannot feed upon anything but Hickory and 

 Walnut; and if you have Hickories fuH of them close to 

 your Orchard, you need not be at all afraid that they will 

 attack your Apple-trees. Whereas if you have Oak-hushes 

 full of the "yellow-necked worm" close to your Orchard, 

 and if, as I have often seen them do, they should strip 

 the Oak-bushes clean, they will be just as likely as not to 

 invade your apple-trees in the course of their'travels in 

 search of food. "A word to the wise is sufficient." Kill 

 the "yellow-necked worms" wherever you find them, 

 ■Without mercy ; but unless you are anxious about your 

 Hickories and Walnuts, you may safely leave the black 

 ■worms without any yellow necks severely alone. 



You send me also some large red Plant-lice which are 

 infesting your Cranberries, and along with them a small 

 oval larva over i inch long and with his back covered, 

 as you say, "with a white fuzz," which fuzz, if closely ex- 

 amined, looks like short pieces of cotton thread growing 

 out of his back in regular rows and shorn off evenly like 

 the hairs of a cloth's brush. This larva you suppose to 

 be also doing great damage to your cranberries. You 

 never made a greater mistake in your life. Hk i.s voun 

 FRiE.VD, INSTEAD OF YOUR ENEMV ; for he fecds exclusively 

 on the plant-liee that do the real mischief in your cran- 

 berry-patch. To make quite certain of this I put the spe- 

 cimen, along with seven or eight of the Plant-lice, into a 

 vial last night, and by six o'clock this morning he had 

 killed and eaten them every one, leaving nothing but their 

 empty skins. Yet last night when I received them from 

 you— thanks to your care in packing them all in a tight 

 little tin box— they were all alive and kicking and in vi- 

 gorous health. Hence you must see, that, instead of kil- 

 ling off these "fuzzy white worms," you should cherish 



the great Family of Ladybirds (Coccine/la) and the Ord^. 

 of Beetles (Colcoptcra). The perfect beetles, produced 

 from these different "fuzzy" larvae, are all of them small 

 obscure-looking, round, brownish insects, many species 

 with a reddish tail; and are quite unlike those gaily- 

 dressed gentlemen, the true Ladybirds. I have bred a 

 species closely allied to the Scymniis hemorrhous of Le- 

 Conte, in prodigious numbers, from a Cock's-comb-like 

 gall on the leaf of a species of Elm made bv a Plant-louse 

 {Thclaxes ulmicola Walsh;. The larva of this last lives 

 inside the gall, feeding on the bodies of the poor Plant- 

 lice at his leisure ; but I know several other species that 

 live at large on the surface of oak-leaves, feeding no doubt 

 on the various plant-lice that afflict that tree. I cannot 

 tell, lyithout rearing the perfect beetle, to what species 

 your larva belongs, as I never saw one exactly like it be- 

 fore. I notice that you say that vou put two of the '"fuz- 

 zy" larvse in the box. There was but one in the box when 

 I opened it. Hence I infer that one of the two ate up his 

 brother on the road. This is an unamiable propensity to 

 which agreat many of these Cannibal insects are addict- 

 ed. But we must bear with their little failings in this 

 respect, in consideration of the great good that they do 

 us by making war on the Plant-lice. 



A. A. Jackson, Wise— The green worm as big as a bov's 

 hnger and with a horn growing on its tail, that you hnd 

 on the Tomato vine, is the common "Potato worm," which 

 would be more correctly called "Tomato worm," because 

 for one found on Potato vines there are a hundred found 

 on Tomato vines. It is occasionally found on Tobacco 

 plants also. About this time of the year it goes under- 

 ground, and changes into a mahogauy-brown pupa with 

 an appendage like the handle of a jug growing out of its 

 head, and containing the long proboscis of the future 

 moth, which will appear near summer. (.See the Answer 

 to J . W. Noble, Missouri, in No. 11 of the Practical Ento- 

 mologist.) The worm is not in the least poisonous, neither 

 13 the horn on its tail a sting, as many suppose. 1 have 

 handled hundreds with my naked hands without their 

 ever attempting to bite, much less sting. You may see 

 from an Article in No. 1 of the Practical Entomologist 

 (p. b), that lo ks in the East are no wiser than folks in the 

 West about this stinging humbug. There are no insects 



I common with you that you need be afraid to handle, ex- 

 ccptthedillerent kinds of wasps and bees; and even with 

 these It IS only the females that sting, the males having 

 no stings at all, like the drones or males of the Honey- 



Hev. Jas. B. Fisher, N. Y.-I sent some of the large lar- 

 vae, that you found adhering to the head and body of a 

 young swallo'w, to Baron Osten Sackcn, who is the great 

 authority on the Order Dipterain North America and he 

 has obligingly replied as follow<f:-"Tlie larvae fiund on 

 the head ol the Swallow probably belong to one of the 

 genera of the great Musca family in the vicinitv of J/u5ra 

 or Sarcophaga. and certainly do not belong to the (Extrus 

 family. Larvteof the Musca family lookiuT like those of 

 the (Estrus family, are very common. Brauer, who pub- 

 ished a. Monograph of the (Bstrus family in lSf,.3: ac- 

 knowledges this resemblance of the two classes of larvte 

 and adds that no thorough distinctive character can be 

 established at present. As to the occurrence of larv^ of 

 the Musca family on Swallows, Dufour found larvje of Lu- 

 c^ta d-sparm the nests of that bird. (Ann. Soc. Entom. 

 France, 1S45, p. 205.) Another instance of these larv» 

 killing birds 111 nests is to be found in Bossi (Dipt. Au- 

 striaca, p. 59.) He says that Mr. Scheffcr found larva! of 

 Uusca erythrocepha!a and M. azurm in birds' nests. Young 

 bir4s, apparently thriving at first, suddenly succumbed 

 to them. In neither of these instances, however, as vou 

 will observe, were the larva> found actually adhering to 

 the body of the young bird, as in the case which vou 

 have been the means of recording. Hence your observa- 

 tions a,re especially valuable. It cannot be impressed too 

 strongly upon the minds of those who are not professed 

 ent^omologists, that by carefully observing and stating 

 facts, and forwarding specimens along with those state- 

 ments to reliable Entomologists, they advance the inte- 

 rests of Science fully as much, as if they were themselves 

 as well-read in Coleoptera as Dr. LeConte, or as learned 

 in Diptera as Baron Osten Sacken. 



E. Daggy, 111.— I forwarded a specimen of the minute 

 two-winged fly, bred from the larva, that attacks so fero- 

 ciously the bark-hce inhabiting the leaf-galls on the 

 Clinton grape-vme, to Baron Osten Sackcn. He has been 

 kind enough to inform me, that "it belongs apparently 

 to the genus Leucopis of Meigen, which is known to live 

 on Coccus and also on the genera Aphis and Chcrmcsr 

 which last also appertains to the Aphis family, though it 

 has some strong relations with Coccus. "To what fami- 

 ly, he adds,"Loew would refer this genus Leucopis, I do 

 not know; but it is to be placed somewhere in the vici 

 mij o! Chlorops, Agromyza, Ac." Loew has split up the 

 great Musca family into a large number of smaller fami- 

 lies; and Chlorops belongs to his Oscinis family, which is 

 immediately followed by the Agromyza family. 



Thos. C. Wright, Ohio.-The "green worm resembling 

 a Tobacco worm' found on Tomato vines is the commoS 

 •Potato-worm," respecting which see Practical Entomo- 

 logist, No. 1, p. 5, and answer to F. W. Noble, Mo., in No 

 U, p. 115, and to A. A. Jackson, Wise, in this present 

 number. Respecting "the white cocoons or eggs'' which 

 ?'°'J/'J,"°TT-,t",^,''^'''^ '° g'''='^' numbers to it, see answer 

 to M. S. Hill Ohio, in No. 6 of the Practical Entomolo- 

 gist p. 46. The specimens sent me bv Mr. Hill were pre- 

 cisely similar to those which you send. If you had close- 

 ly e-xamined the worm, you would have noticed a little 

 black speck at each spot where a cocoon was attached, 

 which represents the hole through which each Microaas- 

 ter larva emerged from the body of the worm to spin its 

 white silkeu cocoon. The reason why, after the cocoons 

 were detached from the worm Oct. 3, you found on Oct. i 

 a fresh lot adhering to it, is that all the parasitic larva 

 did not emerge on the same day. The clinging of the 

 worm with such tenacity to the vine, just before its death 

 on Oct. 9, IS the rule with ichneumonized larvie, as I lone 

 ago observed in a Paper of mine, on the Army-worm and 

 Its parasites, published in the Transactions of the J/Hnois 

 State Agricultural Society, Vol. IV, p. 303. You will find 

 a case of the same kind explained in the last paragraph 

 but one of the answer to W. H. S., 111. in No 11 of the 

 Practical Entomologist, p. 112. I do not at all wonder 

 at your being greatly puzzled by such phenomena as 

 these though to me they are of such dafly occurrence, 

 tliat I have almost ceased to be astonished by them. It 

 13 only within the last 100 years that the thing has been 

 satisfactorily explained. The naturalist Swammerdam, 

 lor instance, bred in the last century 5J5 small ichncu- 



