9 THE ALFALFA CATERPILLAR. 
culture reported the caterpillar infesting the lucern fields in Big- 
horn County, Wyo., and in the year 1907 another correspondent re- 
ported it as a “cutworm,” damaging the alfalfa at Hanford, Cal. 
This caterpillar is also known to have injured alfalfa in Utah. In 
1909 Mr. C. N. Ainslie, of the Bureau of Entomology, found the eggs 
. and larve of this 
species on alfalfa at 
Springer, N. Mex., 
but doing no appar- 
ent damage. Inthe 
same year Mr. E. O. 
G. Kelly, also of the 
Bureau of Entomol- 
ogy, found the larvee 
feeding on alfalfa at 
Wellington, Kans. 
In Arizona, in the 
Salt River Valley 
Fic. 2.—The alfalfa caterpillar (Hurymus eurytheme): and in the Yuma 
Female in the adult or butterfly stage. One-half en- Valley, farmers say 
larged. (Original.) 
that on an average 
about one year in every three or four the “ worms ” become sufficiently 
numerous to cause considerable damage. In the Sacramento Valley, 
and in the irrigated alfalfa regions of south-central California, 
according to Mr. W. E. Packard, of the California Agricultural 
Experiment Station, the butterflies are quite numerous during certain 
years and cause more or less 
damage. 
However, not until alfalia 
began to be widely grown in 
the newly irrigated region 
in the Imperial Valley of 
southern California did the 
butterfly assume such pro- 
portions, and appear with 
such regularity each season, 
as to become a dread to 
the farmers, particularly tO inc. 3.—The alfalfa caterpillar (Eurymus 
those confining their efforts eurytheme) : Male in the adult or butterfly 
wholly ipedlealen erowing. stage. One-half enlarged. (Original.) 
Tt was in 1909, after a season when the larve had taken all of one 
crop of hay, causing a loss of hundreds of dollars on his 320-acre 
ranch, as well as a similar loss to dozens of other ranchers in the 
valley, that Mr. J. A. Walton, of the Imperial Valley, wrote the 
United States Department of Agriculture asking for a remedy or a 
[Cir. 133] 
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