﻿44 EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT 



transformed to moths during the season of their larva state."* Un- 

 fortunately he has left no record of rearing the moths from those 

 chrysalides the following Spring, and we do not know to how large a 

 degree the non-issuance of the moths was owing to unfavorable con- 

 ditions in the breeding cage, which so often affect insects reared in 

 confinement, and which every rearer of insects is so familiar with. 

 But Mr. Otto Meske, of Albany, N. Y., informs me that he once found 

 a chrysalis about the middle of May which in a few days gave him 

 the genuine unipuncta^ and the earliness of the date precludes the 

 possibility of the worm having been hatched the same Spring in that 

 latitude, and renders it almost certain that the pupa hibernated. Of 

 more value still is the earliness of appearance and freshness of most 

 of the moths captured in Spring — indicating that they have just come 

 from the ground. These facts might, it is true, be explained by the 

 larva hibernating partly grown, but the Peshtigo experience is valua- 

 ble here and renders the other conclusion much the most plausible. 

 In fact the hibernation of a certain proportion of the pupa3 finds its 

 parallel in numerous other instances in the lives of moths that might 

 be mentioned. Every experienced entomologist is aware that with 

 lots of species the imagos from the same batch of larvae often issue 

 partly in Fall, partly in Spring; while I have given instances in pre- 

 vious reports of still greater irregularity. The worms that attract 

 such attention, about the time our wheat is ripening by marching from 

 field to field are mostly full grown. These would naturally soon turn 

 to moths; but it must not be forgotten that they are the earliest de- 

 veloped and that the younger and weaker ones have mostly been 

 obliged to succumb in the struggle for individual mastery, which must 

 have preceded the forced abandonment from sheer hunger, of the 

 original fields where they were born ; and that, further, in fields and 

 rank places where the worms are not so numerous as to be obliged to 

 travel, there are individuals maturing for several weeks after the more 

 noticeable hordes have vanished out of sight. As to the hibernation 

 of the moth, having shown that the larger proportion of the moths 

 captured in Autumn have the ovaries yet quite immature, it is pretty 

 evident that the insect hibernates in this state, and I learn from Mr. 

 Strecker, that he has in fact, found the moth in February, hibernating 

 under clapboards at Heading, Pa., while Mr. B. P. Mann, of Cambridge, 

 Mass., has also found it hibernating. It would be unreasonable to as- 

 sume that such large numbers of the moths as occur in Autumn are 

 destined to perish without issue. Moreover, a large number of closely 

 allied moths are known to hibernate, and this mode of hibernation 



•Illinois Farmer, Sept. ISGI, pp. 271 Sc2~-2. 



