72 INSECTS 



ceiving more attention now than ever before, and they 

 merit more attention than they are receiving. 



Altogether, the Coleoptera, among the dominant 

 orders, furnish a very large number of destroyers of 

 plant tissue living and dead, and many that may be 

 ranked as destroyers of plant life. 



The order Lepidoptera includes the butterflies and 

 moths and their larvae are known as caterpillars. Cater- 

 pillars with few exceptions feed on plant tissue, hence, 

 as a whole, the members of the order may be consid- 

 ered as enemies of plant life. Mainly they are open 

 and above-board enemies: direct feeders upon the leaf 

 tissue, without modification or concealment. Such 

 feeding in itself does not endanger plant life except in 

 cases where there is an unusual number of caterpillars 

 or the plant is one that will not survive defoliation; 

 therefore the number of species dangerous to plant 

 life in this way, is not really very great. There are 

 such species, of course, for in the State of Massachu- 

 setts there are hundreds of conifers dead as the result 

 of defoliation from gypsy moth, and in general, any 

 species that can completely strip a tree may cause its 

 death. 



A comparatively small number of Lepidopterous 

 larvae are borers in woody tissue, and these are mainly 

 members of the families Sesiida, Cossidce and Hepi- 

 alidcB'. all Tineites under the modern classification. 

 The Sesiids are small clear-winged moths resembling 

 wasps in appearance, and their larvae bore into trees 

 and in the stems of herbaceous plants. The peach 

 tree borers are types of the former, working under the 

 bark at the surface of the ground and often causing 

 the death of young trees; the squash borer is a type 

 of the latter, boring into the stem of the plant at almost 

 any point; but most often at the base. Both types 



