THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



83 



ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. 



Dr. James Weed, lowa.-The " ^"^'^^^ ^^''^t .l°\'"Jll 

 taken in company with the angle worms, out of the eartn 

 of flower pots^ in which plants were growing are, as you 

 r ghuTsuppo^e. the you^ng of .the latter they occur 



in the earth of the Bower-pots in anything like the num- 

 bers found in the earth you send, they must certain y be 

 iniur ous to the plants. I should recommend re-potting 

 he plants wth fresh earth, free from these gentry. It ,s 

 said that brine will kill them; but if made too strong, it 

 would kill the plants at the same time. Angle-worms 

 Tre of the hermaphrodite sex, though they unite for 

 mutual impregnation ; and consequently a single impreg- 

 nated individual introduced into a flower-pot can propa- 

 gate indefinitely, so long as the conditions ot life are 

 favoraWe. They could not be introduced in cistern 

 water There are tolerably well authenticated cases of 

 small' fish having been taken "P b/ w-ater-spouts and 

 "rained down" upon the earth; but I do-not believe th.it 

 any water-spout or whirlwind could dig up angle-worms^ 

 out of the solid earth, and after carrying them through 

 the air rain them down upon the roof of a house so 

 that they would finally find their way into the cistern. 



J W Iowa —The canker-worm moths which you sent, 

 and on 'which, by the way, I had to pay express charges 

 were absolutely worthless as specimens Of course, t 

 you put two or"three dozen living moths loose m a hall 

 pint bottle, they will flutter every feather off their wings 

 Wore they have travelled a mile. The specimen with 

 short wings is a male, whose wings, as often happens 

 with moths, have failed to expand properly on coming 

 out of the pupa. Such specimens are technically said to 

 be " crippled." 



Huron Burt, Missouri.— The larv» of which you 

 turned up so many bunches in working over your aspa- 

 ragus bed arrived in excellent order, owing to having 

 be?n packed in moist earth, in a little tin box. Ihey 

 produce the same two-winged fly, (Bibw abipennis), the 

 larva of which I recently spoke of in the Pkactic.vl 

 Entomologist, (II p. 45), as having been found by a New 

 England naturalist to be largely preyed on by the Robin. 

 Thev feed exclusively on dead vegetable substances in a 

 moist and decaying state, and are not very particular as 

 to what that substance may be. Years ago I had a parcel 

 of them feeding on damp leaves in a glass vase, and, on 

 putting several dozen of our common " Oak-Apples into 

 the vale, I was surprised to find that they, most of them, 

 quitted the leaves and burrowed into the Oak-Apples. 1 

 Save always found them as you did-in large crowds 

 together. They should not be destroyed, as they do no 

 harm either in the larva or in the fly state. In this wide, 

 wide world there is room enough both for flies and ior 

 men ; and although we are justified in taking life for good 

 and suflicient reasons, yet we should not do so wantonly. 

 L West, Ohio.— The lice " found on the neck and some 

 other parts of the body of a horse, but not very nume- 

 rous, though there were eggs or nits in abundance are 

 not true lice (Pediculus family), but belong to the Bird- 

 lice (Nirmus family). The latter have complete jaws, 

 and are Bilers {Mandibulata); the former have nothing 

 but a beak to suck with, like the various species of True 

 Bugs, (Heteroptera), and are Suckers (Maustcllata). Ihia 

 is ail I can tell you about them, as I have never paid any 

 special attention to this department of Entomology, and 

 do not know of any one in America that has. Most pro- 

 bably, as the horse is an imported animal, not indigenous 

 in America, these lice of yours have been imported along 

 with him, and are well known in Europe; but I do not 

 possess the works of those European authors who have 

 written specially upon this subject. Undoubtedly, lice 

 of any kind are injurious to any animal, if they are 

 allowed to increase to any very excessive numbers. 

 To get rid of them in your case, I should recommend 

 kerosene to be sparingly applied to the parts infested by 

 nits. But it would be dangerous to apply kerosene freely 

 over the whole surface of a horse's body. Tobacco-water 

 would also destroy them, but must be applied with still 

 greater caution than kerosene. 



A. A. Baker, N. J.— The cocoon sent, which you found 

 suspended from a twig of Wild Cherry, is, I believe, 

 that of Attacus Promeihea—a. large moth expanding 

 some four inches, and the male of which is remarkable 



for being colored so difl'erently from the female, that at 

 first sight it would be taken for a distinct species. The 

 species is not destructive to fruit, trees, and is more 

 usually found on Sassafras. 



J H. Hunt, Ohio. — You say that you have examined, 

 umicr the microscope, the case-bearing lepidopterous 

 larva:, noticed in my answer to you last month, (p. 7o), 

 and that they are not IG-footed, but 6-footed. Lepidopte- 

 rous larvffi, as you are probably aware, usually have only 

 six true jointed legs in front, and behind a certain num- 

 ber of fleshy pro-legs (or shamlegs) varying from four to 

 ten. In certain genera that mine the leaves of plants, 

 both the legs and the pro-legs are reduced to nothing, 

 and in many of these case-bearing genera the pro-legs 

 are 'o indistinct, that they are only perceptible when the 

 creature walks, being represented merely by a slight 

 protuberance. You sent so few specimens that, being 

 desirous to breed the moth from them, I did not before, 

 and I do not now, desire to sacrifice an individual by 

 extracting it out of its case. Likely enough you may be 

 right as to the indistinctness of the pro-legs. By the way, 

 in saving that '-no coleopterous larva lived in such cases 

 as these ' I should have mentioned that the leaf- feeding 

 coleopte'rous genera Crypiocephahi^, CAfam^vs and their 

 allies inhabit in the larva state somewhat similar, though 

 much shorter cases. There can be no doubt, however, 

 that your cases will produce minute moths and not 

 beetles judging from the lepidopterous character of their 

 structure and that of the larvae which they contain. 



J. Pettit, C. W.— The strong smelling Carabide is Sa- 

 plochile pi/gm(ta Dej. 



Jas. H. Parsons, N. Y.— The "thousand-legged worms" 

 of which you sent many dozen specimens dug up in your 

 garden, and which you suppose to be the same as those 

 TOU saw last vear eating dead seeds (beans, peanuts, ic.), 

 kre the lulus virqaius of Wood. They difl-er from the 

 species I described (Practical Entomologist, II, p. 34), 

 in having 7-jointed (not 6-jointed) antenna, and in 

 having a conspicuous black line along the whole length 

 of the back. The flatter "thousand-legged worms, of 

 which you sent only a few, and which you think is the 

 species that attacked your onions last year, ^siheFoly- 

 dcsmus serratus of Wood, and is very closely allied to the 

 species which Dr. Fitch ascertained to prey on living 

 vegetables, [Polydesmus canadensis). The specimens sent 

 arlonly half-grown, (i-inch instead of }-inch), which is 

 the reason of their being much paler colored than those 

 you saw last year. The " two yellow worms ' are, as 

 you suppose, true wireworms, and would have changed, 

 if permitted to live, into some kind of Click-beetle. 

 The two cocoons, one J-inch, the other i-inch long," are 

 the pupa-cases of some two-winded fly of the great 

 Musca familv, and probably those of your common Onion- 

 fly (Anthomyia ceparum). The " greenish globular bodies 

 which you suppose to be eggs, I cannot identify. As 

 to the "single specimen of a thousand-legged worm 2 

 inches long," it must have furnished a meal to its breth- 

 ren on the road ; for there was not a vestige of it in the 

 box. 



F. C. Hill, Ohio.— I will candidly confess my mistake 

 in savi'ng that our American to.ads do not leap, (Practi- 

 cal Entomologist, II, 57), I must have been thinking, 

 as you suggest, of the European species, which have not 

 that faculty. Still, I never saw even our go-ahead Ame- 

 rican toads leap more than a few inches at a lime, while 

 frogs often clear several yards at a single jump. I never 

 saw toads eat strawberries myself; but Dr. Trimble says 

 that they will, and he is a decided friend to this poor 

 maligned animal, {Fruit Insects, p. 74). The "glorified 

 snuash-bug, abouti inch long, witli acreston his thorax, 

 which as you say, sometimes inflicts a severe puncture 

 with his beak, must be the Prionotus novcnarius of Say. 

 I have received it from Pennsylvania, but was not pre- 

 viously aware that it occurred in the Northwestern States. 

 Say states that "its puncture is very painful, benumbing 

 the vicinity of the wounded part for a considerable time. 

 But with all these species that pierce you with their beak, 

 it is the easiest thing in the world to hold them in such 

 a way that you cannot be attacked by them All that 

 you have to do is to grasp them laterally by the breast 

 between your thumb and finger; and so long as you do 

 not relax your hold, you are perfectly safe. 



John H.Tice, Missouri.— The woody blood-brown gall, 

 about four inches long and one inch in diameter, on the 



