﻿OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



37 



punctured fruit. The reader of these reports needs not to be told how 

 admirably the ovipositors of the different Katydids are adapted to 

 splitting the thin edge of a leaf, to penetrating a twig, or to rasping 

 the same, according to the manner in which the eggs are laid ; nor 

 need he go beyond the case of the locust, with her drilling valves for 

 an example of the same admirable adaptation. To come to moths, let 

 me illustrate by a few examples taken alike from these reports. Mark 

 the sword-like sheath and the extremely acute, wirey, elastic, thread- 

 like organ (Rep V, Fig. 74, j) which is to convey the egg of the Yucca 

 Moth to its destination through the tender flesh of the forming fruit : the 

 horny, telescopic process (cmte fig.9, e) that enables the Spring Canker 

 Worm Moth to thrust her eggs into cracks and cavities and beneath 

 close-lying scales of bark ! The ovipositor of the Stalk Borer ( Gor- 

 iyna nitela, Rep. I, Fig. 35) which in the larva state burrows in the 

 stem of the Potato and of a variety of other plants, ends in a pair of 

 t^ig- 23.] horny nippers which open laterally (Fig. 



23.) When closed they form a wedge which 

 seems admirably adapted to prying be- 

 tween a terminal leaf bud or into the ten- 

 der union of leaf with stem, and it is more 

 oviposiTo.ior^^NANiTELA:-«, ^hau probablo that the eggs are so placed. 



showing it excerted from tip of abdo- npu ^^ „«" tu„ U^ll A „v^,, 117^..v^ 4 U ,^ ^^™o, r^i' 



men; ^ showing it irom above. ^hat of the tall Army Worm, the eggs ot 



which are laid in exposed masses and covered with down, is a mere 

 fleshy, slightly bifid protuberaDCO, generally hidden altogether out of 

 sight in a dense mass of soft scales and down, which fills the end of 

 the abdomen and which is easily detached and used in oviposition by 

 merely rubbing against the surface on which the eggs are being laid, 

 and perhaps also by the use of the bifid ovipositor for that purpose. 

 In detaching the rather abundant pale hair that adorns the end of the 

 abdomen outside, one is sur- 

 prised at the profusion of 

 black and gray downy mat- 

 ter that crowds the inside. 

 If we examine that of the ^ ^ 



Ovipositor of Uxafmed Kustic: — 

 parent of the Variegated "' -"^s it appears at end of abdomen; 

 ^ ° ^, when extended. 



Cut-worm — the Unarmed Rustic (Rep. I, p. 72,) the 

 eggs of which (Fig. 24) are exposed and not pro- 

 tected with any covering, we shall find that it also is 

 a mere fleshy, retractile tubercle (Fig. 25) capable 

 of slight elongation. This last may be taken as an 



Eggs of Uxarmed o o j 



^uia^gwiVl', a batch mi- example of the typical form of ovipositor in all moths 



tural size. 



