Attacks the Grape- Vine. 203 



finished in the spring ; and the first brood of the summer, 

 the history of which has not yet been fully investigated, 

 may be expected in June. This, therefore, appears to be a 

 proper time to direct attention to this little destroyer, whose 

 ravages are comparatively recent, or have been overlooked, 

 hitherto, in this vicinity. 



In the middle of a warm sunny day, about the first of 

 July, many small black moths were seen flying around and 

 alighting upon the creeper, and they continued to appear, 

 every fair day, for a week or more. There was some dif- 

 ference in their size and color, the females being the largest, 

 and glossed with blue ; but, in both sexes, there was an 

 orange-colored collar around the neck. The wings ex- 

 panded, in flying, about an inch. The body was slender, 

 but thickened and tufted towards the end. These moths 

 laid their eggs, in clusters, on the lower sides of the leaves, 

 from twenty to fifty in each cluster. 



On the twelfth of August, caterpillars, of various sizes, 

 which had been hatched from these eggs, were seen upon 

 the leaves of the creeper. Some of them could not have 

 been more than two or three days old, while others had 

 probably been hatched ten days or more. The younger 

 caterpillars were of a greenish yellow color, and the black 

 spots on their backs were very small. They kept together, 

 in swarms, beneath the leaves, the caterpillars in each 

 swarm arranging themselves in rows, side by side, with 

 their heads all in the same direction. At first they eat 

 small irregular portions of the lower surface of the leaf, 

 leaving the cuticle above and the veins untouched ; but as 

 they grew larger, they eat up the whole leaf, excepting the 

 stalk and the principal veins, and passing from leaf to leaf, 

 they devoured each one, in turn, in the same way. The 

 grape-vines suffered more from them than the creeper, long 

 shoots of the former being entirely stript of their leaves by 

 the insects, before the source of the mischief was suspected 

 and discovered. These caterpillars appeared to come to 

 their full size within fourteen or fifteen days, then measur- 

 ing, when at rest, about six lines, or six tenths of an inch, 

 in length. Their color, at this age, was a deep yellow. 

 The segments or rings of the body were very distinct ; 

 each ring having a transverse row of eight, oval, black, 

 velvet-like spots or tufts upon it. The feet were short, and 

 sixteen in number. The head was very small, with three 



