456 LEPIDOPTERA. 



all their motions. Previous accounts concerning; their habits 



o 



and depredations were fully confirmed by observations and 

 information at Salisbury. 



These wheat-worms, or wheat-caterpillars, as they ought 

 to be called, if these accounts really refer to the same kind 

 of insect, are supposed by some persons to be identical 

 with the clover-worms, which have been found in clover, 

 in various parts of the country, and have often been seen 

 spinning down from lofts and mows where clover has been 

 stowed away.* A striking similarity between them has been 

 noticed by a writer in the " Genesee Farmer."! Stephen 

 Sibley, Esq. informs me that he observed the clover-worms, 

 in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, many years ago, suspended 

 in such numbers by their threads from a newly gathered 

 clover mow, and from the timbers of the building, as to be 

 very troublesome and offensive to persons passing through 

 the barn. He also states, that, if he recollects rightly, 

 these insects were of a brown color, and about half an 

 inch long. 



I am sorry to leave the history of these wheat-worms 

 unfinished ; but hope that the foregoing statements, which 

 have been carefully collected from various sources and com- 

 pared with my own observations, will tend to remove some 

 of the difficulties wherewith the subject has been heretofore 

 involved. . The contradictory statements and unsatisfactory 

 discussions that have appeared in some of our papers, re- 

 specting the ravages of these worms and the maggots of 

 the wheat-fly, might have been avoided, if the writers on 

 these insects had always been careful to give a correct and 

 full description of the insects in question. Had this been 

 done, a crawling worm or caterpillar, of a brownish color, 

 three eighths or one half of an inch in length, provided with 

 legs, and capable of suspending itself by a silken thread 

 of its own spinning, would never have been mistaken for 

 a writhing maggot, of a deep yellow color, only one tenth 



* New England Farmer, Vol. XVII. p. 73. t Ibid., p. 164. 



