﻿22 EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT 



With a little care in making a close connection between the 

 V-shaped trough and the box, the above contrivance must work to- 

 perfection, as, indeed, Mr. Barker found it to do. Yet on account of 

 the greater labor and expense of making and using it, and of the 

 greater difficulty of examining beneath it, the first described is the 

 preferable of the two. Indeed I should advise the use ot Mr. Jones' 

 contrivance, if kept properly oiled, over all forms of troughs whatso- 

 ever, for they too often get filled up with the dead bodies of the 

 moths or with leaves, or get bridged with spider web; and where fas- 

 tened directly around the tree must needs be renewed as the girth of 

 the tree increases. 



THE ARMY \YORM—LeuGania* unipimcta Haw. 

 (Ord. Lepidoptera; Fam. NocxuiD^.f) 



The insect which, next to the Rocky Mountain Locust attracted 

 most attention and did most damage in Missouri during the summer 

 of 1875, was the Army Worm. In its destructive power and sudden 

 appearance and disappearance, it may be compared to the dreaded 

 locust of the mountains; but everyone can see how this last comes 

 and goes, upon its wings; whereas the coming and going of the Army 

 Worm are more mysterious and not so well understood. 



The species has already been treated of in my second Report; but 

 the experience of six years has added much that is of interest to our 

 general stock of knowledge of so remarkable an animal, and from the 

 evidence adduced a year ago and published in the appendix to the 

 Chinch Bug article, it is manifest that my second Report was very 

 poorly distributed, and is not known to one in a thousand of the farm- 

 ers of the State. I deem it advisable, therefore, to devote some space 

 in the present Report to the consideration of the Army Worm, and in 

 doing so, I may have occasion to reproduce, in quotation marks, a few 

 passages from the previous article referred to. 



* Leucanidce of Giienfie. 



+ This long known and familial- generic term, applietl to a well delined genus, has recently 

 been dropped from our nomenclature — in the writings and in the ' ' List" and ' ' Cheek List" of N. A. 

 Noctuidffi by Mr. A. R Grote. It has been replaced by Heliophila of Huebner. By this change we pas& 

 from light into darkness. I consider that the reasons so long urged by entomologists against the adop- 

 tion of the classification of the " Tentamen" and " Verzeichnias," and particularly those given by 

 Guenee for not following this last in his admirable work on the Noctuidte, are good and sound. The Ilueb- 

 nerian classification is essentially unreal, and the generic divisions so inadequately defined that I doubt 

 if any one would attempt to make use of the works in question, were it not for the references to the ad- 

 mirably illustrated works of the same author. Tlie introduction of liis generic terms into American Lepi- 

 dopterology has so upset its nomenclature, without in the least advancing our knowledge, and the grounds 

 for this introduction are so questionable, that those who make these insects a speciality are apt in the 

 future to divide into two factions— the Uuebnerites and the ante-IIuebnerites; in which event the lattei- 

 ■will certainly have strong support from entomologists in general. 



