THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



55 



as Sterne has suggested, seems to have been made 

 out of the refuse clippings from larger and better 

 worlds — ever gives something for nothing ? To set 

 the matter in its true light, we may suppose Dr. 

 Fitch's application, and the answer thereto, to have 

 run somewhat as follows : — 



ANSWEKS TO COEEESPONDENTS. 



DR. FITCH TO MR. CURTIS.— Imaginary letter. 

 Mv Dear Sir :— The State of New York is suffering an 

 annual loss of many million dollars, by the fearful^ rav- 

 aees of the Wheat Midge. Our State Agricultural bocie- 

 ty is desirous of importing into the State some or all of 

 the three parasites, which check and control that insect 

 in your country, and prevent it from doing any material 

 damage there. We wish for a very large number of liv- 

 in"- specimens of these parasites, so as to supply every 

 one of the 59 counties in our State, and make it a moral 

 certainty that the breed shall be permanently establish- 

 ed in each. Of course, if the Society were to supply only 

 one or two favored localities, it would give rise to a cry 

 of partiality and favoritism, and would do us more harm 

 than good. 



Will you be kind enough to meet our wishes in this re- 

 spect' I am well aware that your time is very fully oc- 

 cupied by scientific investigations, which will shed lustre 

 upon your name to the remotest generation, and that 

 what we ask of you will take up many months of your 

 valuable time, and add nothing to your scientific reputa- 

 tion I am well aware, also, that what we ask of you will 

 probably cost you a few thousand dollars, to be paid out 

 of your own private pocket. For example, as the Wheat 

 Midge is comparatively quite rare in England, it would 

 be necessary for you to run all over the country, in order . 

 to find some particular locality where it can be met with 

 abundantly in company with its parasites ; and having 

 found that locality, you would have to establish yourself 

 there for a few months, and go hard to work at collecting 

 specimens. But as the work to be done can only be done, 

 properly and effectually, by a man of distinguished Ento- 

 mological attainments like yourself, and cannot safely be 

 entrusted to a mere tyro in Entomology, I hope you will 

 consent to assist us in the manner that we desire. Only 

 conceive my mortification and disgust, if I were to be a 

 party to the employment of some tyro for the object 

 which we have in view, and that tyro, instead of sending 

 us the Parasites of the Wheat Midge, were to send us 

 some new Noxious Insect, in addition to the hundreds, 

 which we have already imported accidentally from Eu- 

 rope, and which annually pick the pockets of our Farm- 

 ers of hundreds of millions of dollars! Think, my dear 

 sir, for one moment, of our Midge-ridden farmers in New 

 York ! Think that, by sacrificing a few months of your 

 time, and a few thousand dollars out of your own private 

 pockets, you will put millions of dollars into the pockets 

 of our wealthy State, and, eventually, hundreds of mil- 

 lions into the pockets of the whole United States! With 

 your well-known philanthropic sentiments, can you pos-, 

 sibly, for one single moment, resist the temptation of 

 making the American people more rich and more pros- 

 perous than they already are? 



You will please distinctly to understand, that neither 

 the Congress of the United States, nor the Legislature of 

 the State of New York, nor the New York State Agricul- 

 tural Society, have appropriated one cent towards the 

 furtherance of the above very important subject. It 13 

 possible, therefore, that, in addition to your own personal 

 expenses, you may have to pay, out of your own pocket, 

 the freight and express charges on the packages of living 

 Parasites sent from time to time to us. But even if you 

 have to do this, think of the glory you will acquire by 

 annually, for all time, adding hundreds of millions of 

 dollars to the profits of the great American nation ! 



Very respectfully, yours, Ac., Ac, ic. 



MR. CURTIS TO DR. FITCH.— Imaginary answer to the 

 above. 

 My Dear Sir:— Very much obliged for your kind offer, 

 but, as the old saying goes, "Charity begins at home." 

 Please to accept the expression of my very distinguished 

 consideration, Ac, Ac, Ac 



Very respectfully, yours, Ac, Ac, Ac. 



L. D. Morse, Mo.— The two larva; about i inch long, 

 which, as you say, "were found in Texas-grown Osage 

 Orange seed, and are called by the Texans the Screw- 

 worin," are quite new to me, and, so far as I can see from 

 their pressed and flattened condition, different from any- 

 thing known to me. Please, if possible, send me several 

 dozen living specimens, packed in a little pasteboard or 

 tin box, that I may see the actual creature and not its 

 squashed carcase. If this larva feeds upon Osage Orange 

 seed, as I infer from what you say, it cannot be the same 

 "Screw- worm," which, according to the item clipped from 

 the Texan Newspaper, hatched out in the fly-blown nose 

 of a sleeping man, ''and penetrated the head so as to 

 cause his death." As the item goes on to say that 

 "this is the first human death we have ever seen recorded 

 from that cause," I rather infer that the true Texan 

 "Screw-worm" attacks stock in some manner or other, 

 and that the specimens which you send, if they really do 

 feed on seeds, are something quite different. It is impos- 

 sible that any larva should sometimes feed on the body 

 of a living animal, and sometimes ou vegetable sub- 

 stances 



Thos. T. Smith, Minn.— The robust green worms, as big 

 as a man's thumb, and with singular coral-red, yellow 

 and blue warts growing on their backs, which you found 

 feeding on wild plum leaves, are the larvse of the Cecro- 

 pia moth (Attacm Cecropia). Besides plum leaves, they 

 feed on apple, cherry, currant, barberry and hazel leaves, 

 and I have this summer found them actually eating hick- 

 ory leaves. In a state of nature the larva attaches its 

 tough, pale-brown, pod-like, silken cocoon to the side of 

 a twig, and there it remains all winter exposed to the bit- 

 terest blasts of heaven. Yet next May or June the chry- 

 salis, into which the larva changed shortly after spinning 

 up, scarcely ever fails to work its way out into the light 

 of day in the winged moth form. This feat is gradually 

 accomplished by the chrysalis rubbing its rough head 

 from side to side against the upper end of the cocoon, 

 where the silk is less dense; and the whole process— 

 which has been performed under my own personal in- 

 spection— occupies about an hour, during all which tinie 

 you can hear the persevering little animal rub-rub-rub- 

 bing for dear life. Of course, if the moth first came out of 

 the pupal shell, and afterwards undertook to rub a pas- 

 sage-way for itself, it would wear all the beautiful downy 

 hair off its forehead. In the writings of many closet-na- 

 turalists, you will find a great deal of nonsense about moths 

 discharging an acrid fluid, which burns a passage-way 

 for them through the cocoon. They do, in reality, al- 

 most all of them discharge a creamy fluid, either shortly 

 before or shortly after emerging from their cocoons ; but 

 that fluid, which I have repeatedly daubed over my own 

 flesh, has no "acrid" or "burning" properties whatever; 

 and moreover it is discharged from the tail of the moth 

 and not from its head, so that, unless the moths emerged 

 tail-foremost (which is never the case), it could not help 

 them to escape, even if it was as strong as aqua-fortis. 



The Cecropia moth is, to my taste, the handsomest, as 

 it is certainly one of the largest insects found in the U. 

 States, expanding about six inches from wing-tip to wiug- 

 tip, and being of a rabbit-gray color with a large kidney- 

 shaped eye in the middle of each one of its wings. Of 

 the two specimens sent, one had died in the larva state, 

 probably from not having been fully fed, and the other 

 had changed into the chrysalis state and was alive and 

 healthy. You will find an excellent figure of the moth 

 in Harris's Injurious Insects (p. 387), but that of the lar- 

 va (p. 3SS) is too elongate, having evidently been drawn 

 from an alcoholic specimen. 



Willie C. Fish, Mass.— Many thanks for the Apple- 

 worm specimens, which arrived in good order. All you 

 sent were in the pupa state when they reached me, and 

 all belonged to the same species, those in the tm box 

 merely differing in being pale immature individuals. 

 They are identical with specimens previously received 

 by me from Connecticut, and having the same habits as 

 your insect. The insect is as yet undeseribed in this 

 country, though I suspect it to be an imported species, 

 from the fact of its occurringonly on the Eastern seabord. 

 Fitch's Apple Midge (Sciara [molobrus] mah) is quite differ- 



