824 LEPIDOPTERA. 



are black, situated in a white field, and with a black dot on 

 each side. In Maine it pupates about the middle of August, 

 making a thin gauzy cocoon, consisting of yellowish green 

 silken threads. The pupa is white, with scattered black dots 

 and black stripes ; it remains thirty-two days in the pupa 

 state, the moth appearing during the middle of September. 



In Anisopteryx the male antennae are simply pubescent, the 

 wings are ample, and rounded at the tip, while the hind wings 

 are rounded. The female is wingless, the head small and the 

 body is oval. The male of A. vernata Peck (Plate 8, fig. 9 ; 

 9 a, female; 96, larva), the moth of the Canker worm, is ash 

 colored, with a whitish costal spot near the tip of the fore 

 wings which are crossed by two jagged whitish bands dotted 

 with black on the outside ; they expand about one inch and a 

 quarter. In the early spring and late in autumn the male flies 

 about and couples with the wingless female, which lays a patch 

 of short, cylindrical eggs, from sixty to one hundred or more, 

 arranged in rows, and glued to the surface of the bark. The 

 larvae hatch from the first to the middle of May, or as Harris 

 states, about the time of the flowering of the red currant, and 

 the leaving out of the apple tree. Almost before the presence 

 of the larvae is known they often nearly strip an orchard of its 

 leaves. They also attack the cherry, plum, elm, and other 

 trees and shrubs. The canker worm (Plate 8, fig. 96) when 

 mature is about an inch long, ash colored on the back, black 

 on the sides, and beneath yellowish. It varies greatly in the 

 intensity of its markings. It ceases eating when four weeks 

 old, and late in June creeps down, or lets itself down by a 

 thread, and burrowing from two to six inches in the loose earth, 

 there forms a rude earthen cocoon, fastening the grains of earth 

 together with silk. Twenty-four hours after the cocoon is fin- 

 ished the worm becomes a chrysalid, which, in the male, is 

 slender, rather pointed in front and light brown in color. Com- 

 ing forth in the autumn and following spring, its progress up 

 the tree can be arrested by the application of coal oil or prin- 

 ter's ink, by the well known methods, around the trunk, while 

 the bunches of eggs should be picked off and burnt. The A. 

 pometaria Harris is as abundant as A. vernata ; it has thinner 

 wings, wanting the whitish bands and spot, and having an 



