454 LEPIDOPTERA. 



According to him, it had been known for years in the west- 

 ern part of New York ; and it was not so much the new 

 appearance of the insect, as its increase, which had caused 

 alarm respecting it.* Mr. Nathaniel Sill, of Warren, Penn- 

 sylvania, has given a somewhat different description of it.f 

 On threshing his winter-wheat, immediately after harvest, 

 he found among the screenings a vast army of this new en- 

 emy. He says that it was a caterpillar, about three eighths 

 of an inch in length when fully grown, and apparently of 

 a straw color ; but, when seen through a magnifier, it was 

 found to be striped lengthwise with orange and cream-color. 

 Its head was dark brown. It was provided with legs, could 

 suspend itself by a thread, and resembled a caterpillar in all 

 its motions. 



This insect ought not to be confounded with the smaller 

 worms found by Mr. Sill in the upper joints of the stems 

 of the wheat, and within the kernels, until their identity 

 has been proved by further observations. It appears highly 

 probable that Mr. Gaylord's and Mr. Sill's wheat-caterpillars 

 are the same, notwithstanding the difference in their color. 

 Insects, of the same size as these caterpillars, and of a 

 brownish color, have been found in various parts of Maine, 

 where they have done much injury to the grain. Unlike 

 the maggots of the wheat-fly, w r ith which they have been 

 confounded, they remain depredating upon the ears of the 

 grain until after the time of harvest. Immense numbers 

 of them have been seen upon barn-floors, where the grain 

 has been threshed, but they soon crawl away and conceal 

 themselves in crevices, where they probably undergo their 

 transformations. Mr. Elijah Wood, of Winthrop, Maine, 

 says that the chrysalis has been observed in the chaff late 

 in the fall.:}: A gentleman from the southern part of Pe- 

 nobscot County informs me that he winnowed out nearly 



a bushel of these insects from his wheat, in the autumn of 







* The Cultivator, Vol. VI. p. 43. t Ibid. p. 21. 



J New England Fanner, Vol. XVII. p. 73. 



