130 VEGETABLE GARDENING 



Cut-worms (Agrotis sp.). Cut- worms often cause seri- 

 ous injury by eating vegetable plants. They are generally 

 most injurious while the plants are small, when they often 

 bite off young cabbage, bean, corn, or other plants close to 

 or just under the ground and thus destroy them. Their 

 work is most perceptible in the spring, on account of the 

 small amount of growing vegetation at that time, yet they 

 also work in the autumn. True cut-worms are the larvae of 

 several night-fly ing moths which appear late in summer. The 

 female deposits her eggs late in the summer. These soon 

 hatch into worms which enter the ground and live near the 

 surface on the tender roots of grass and other plants until the 



Fig. 46. Cut-worm and moth. 



approach of cold weather. They then descend deeper into 

 the ground and remain torpid until spring, when they come 

 to the surface 'and again commence their depredations. 

 Cut- worms, when full grown, are from one and a quarter to 

 one and three-quarter inches long and rather large in diam- 

 eter as compared with the length. Their skin is of some 

 dull color, smooth, often with dull stripes and bands. 



Remedies. Cut-worms are most injurious in sod land 

 or land on which weeds have been permitted to grow in 

 autumn, or in land adjacent thereto. They are not likely 

 to winter over on any land that is kept free from weeds and 

 grass in autumn, since there is no food for them in such 

 places. The worms feed almost entirely by night and hide 



