﻿OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 41 



moths from different parts of the country, and would right here tender 

 my thanks, for their readiness in furnishing material from the locali- 

 ties where they reside, to the following gentlemen : A.J. Packard, Jr., 

 Salem, Mass.; H. A. Hagen, Cambridge, Mass.; J. A. Lintner and Otto 

 Meske, Albany, N. Y. ; Hermann Strecker, Reading, Pa. ; A. W. Hoff- 

 meister, Fort Madison, Iowa; A. Bolter and O. S. Westcott, Chicago, 

 Ills., and Cyrus Thomas, Carbondale, Ills. The result of these examin- 

 ations proves that several weeks must elapse from the time the moth 

 first appears before she can lay eggs. I have found these fully de- 

 veloped in only three specimens, one obtained of Dr. Hagen, and cap- 

 tured in Maryland (time not known) and two taken by myself in St. 

 Louis county, in the month of September. They have fair develop- 

 ment in some of the specimens taken during the same month in Chi- 

 cago and New York, whereas in most of the specimens I have exam- 

 ined — many of them taken as late as August and September in Iowa, 

 New York and Massachusetts—the eggs have been found very imma- 

 ture. This has likewise been the case with the few that I have been 

 able to examine that were captured in the Spring. I am inclined to 

 think that this is owing to the fact that most of the specimens in the 

 cabinets of entomologists are fresh specimens, either bred in-doors 

 and killed soon after issuing, or taken at sugar. There can be little 

 doubt that the moth lives several weeks, or even months. Its tongue 

 is very stout and by it the moth can perhaps obtain nourishment from 

 the moisture and juice from the tender base of grass stalks,* as well 

 as from the nectar of llowers. It naturally seeks rank grass plots, 

 swamps or prairies, and once there would hardly be attracted to 

 timber where sugaring is generally carried on. 



In my second Report I stated my belief that in this latitude the 

 bulk of the eggs are laid in the Fall of the year, and only the excep- 

 tional few in the Spring. This opinion was based on a large amount 

 of testimony that might be cited to show that the worm never hatches 

 the same year on land that was ploughed late in the Fall or in the 

 Spring, or in grass or grain sown in Spring, f and that where meadows 

 or grass plots have been burned in winter, they have been exempt 

 from the ravages of the worm, while non-burned and adjacent grass 

 has swarmed with it ; also on the further fact that, so far as my ex- 

 perience goes, the raoths are more numerous in the Fall than in the 



* The Germans apply the term ' ' honey-sweating" to some grasses. 



t The testimony on these points is conclusive, as any one can see by cavefiilly perusing the Report 

 which B. D. Walsh published on the insect in the Transactions of the Illinois Natural History Society 

 for 181)1. In 1875 the same facts were observed, and Mr. C. M. Sa;nuels, of Clinton, Ivy., reports to me 

 that all over that country where the worms were bad in May, they came from low grass lands, and that, 

 they never occurred on lands broken the previous Fall, though often abounding right alongside, on. 

 unbroken lands. 



