176 ItfJUBIOUS INSECTS 



Thus our quail, purple-finch, and many other birds, have 

 too often unjustly received the execrations of the fruit 

 culturist, which that evil genius, the Cut-worm, alone 

 deserved. To understand an enemy's foible is to have 

 conquered, and when we learn the source of an evil 

 it need exist no longer. The range of these Climbing 

 Cut-worms seems to be wide, for we have undoubted 

 evidence of their attacking the Grape-vine in California, 

 and I have found two species in Missouri, which have 

 the same habit. Climbing Cut- worms frequently have 

 the same habit of severing plants, as those which have 

 never been known to climb, and I very much incline to 

 believe that this habit is only acquired in the spring time, 

 and most Cut-worms will mount trees if they are forced 

 to do so, by the absence of herbaceous plants. 



The Climbing Cut-worm (Agrotis scandens, Kiley), has 

 a similar general appearance to those which do not climb 

 (see fig. 50, page 80). Its general color is a very light 

 yellowish-gray, variegated with dirty bluish-green, and 

 when filled with food it wears a much greener appearance 

 than otherwise. In depth of shading it is variable, how- 

 ever, and the young worm is of a more uniform dirty 

 whitish-yellow, with the lines along the body less distinct, 

 but the shiny spots more so than in the full grown ones. 

 Mr. Cochran informs us that on the Apple tree, when 

 this worm has fed out its bud, the work is effectually 

 done, that no adventitious or accessory bud ever starts 

 again from the same place; the worm, as it were, boring 

 into the very heart of the wood and effectually destroy- 

 ing the ability of the tree to re-act, at such a point, in the 

 formation of a new bud, and that consequently a tree that 

 is once stripped generally dies, and that this occurs more 

 frequently on small or dwarf trees, where the buds are 

 few, and three or four worms in a single night can eat 

 out every one. 



