PACKARD.) EUROPEAN CABBAGE WEB-MOTH. 751 



of the leaves enables them to withstand considerable heat with very- 

 little injury. The sacrifice of a few heads of cabbage will soon teach 

 an experimenter how far he can go with the hot water. A Rural Home 

 correspondent speaks also from his own experience and says: "1 heat 

 water to nearly a boiling-heat, and put it on witii a common watering- 

 pot, with the sprinkler removed. If it is verj' hot it will color some of 

 the leaves, but it does not seem to hurt the cabbage in the least. This 

 will kill the young worms and nearly all the old ones. There w ill some- 

 times be a few that do not get touched with the water. These can be 

 picked oft" with a small pair of pincers. If there are not a great many 

 the last remedy will do." 



The European Cabbage Web-Moth, Plutella xylosfella (Linnaeus). — Small green 

 caterpillars, feeding on the under side of the outer leaves, and spinning web-like cocoonB 

 in folds in the leaves; changing to a small moth somewhat like a clothes-moth. 



My attention was first called to this moth, now almost cosmopolitan 

 in its distribution, in September and October, 1870, at the Agricultural 

 College at Amherst, Mass. The little green caterpillars were quite 

 abundant on the under side of the outer leaves ot the cabbages on the 

 college-farm, and their web-like, delicate cocoons were found attached 

 to the leaf in depressions or folds. Afterward a correspondent in Mich- 

 igan sent me specimens of the worm, the cocoon, and moth, stating that 

 it was doing great damage to the cabbages there. The season at Am- 

 herst, as all over New England in 1870, was very warm and unusually 

 dry, which accounts for the unusual increase in this insect. 



This insect, well known in Europe, whence it has been carried all over 

 the civilized world, was first noticed iu this country by Dr. Fitch in 

 1855, who gives an account of it in his "First and Second Eeports," etc., 

 having observed it in Illinois, but not in New York. He called it Ceros- 

 toma h-assicella, but ic is undoubtedly the well-known European Plutella 

 xyllostella Linn. Though the insect has been observed in this country 

 only late in the autumu when the cabbages have headed, yet these 

 worms, as Dr. Fitch suggests, probably belong to a second brood. 

 Stainton, in his "Manual of British Butterflies and Moths," states that 

 the moths fly in May and August, while the caterpillars appear in June, 

 July, and a second brood again iu September. Dr. Fitch suspects that 

 the first brood of caterpillars may feed ou the young cabbage-plants in 

 early summer, and thus do more mischief than iu the autumu when the 

 heads are fully formed. 



Mr. C. A. Putnam, of Salem, brought me specimens found on the 

 cauliflower. On November 15 it pupated iu a thin cocoon consisting 

 of a single layer of silk forming a very open web. 



Bescription. — The caieiyiUar is a little pale-green worm, with small, stiff, dark hairs 

 scattered over the body ; it is a quarter of an inch long. When about to transform it 

 spins a beautiful open net-work of silk as a cocoon, open at one end, of white silken 

 threads ; it is a third of an inch long. 



Pvpa with a long, broad, white dorsal band, and a broad, lateral band, widening be- 

 fore and inclosing three oblique dark stripes, the lower of which is formed by the an- 

 tennae. In a more mature chrysalis the white bands become narrower, and the dark 

 portions darker. 



The moth is pale gray, with the head, palpi, and antennaewhite, but the latter are ringed 

 alternately with white and gray ou the outer half. The rest of the body is gray, except 

 on the under side, and on the middle of the thorax, where there is a broad, white, lon- 

 gitudinal baud, which, when the wings are folded, is continuous with the white baud 

 along the inner side of the wing;8. The two front pair of k'gs are gray, with the tar- 

 sal joints ringed narrowly with white; the hind legs are whitish and hairy. The fore 

 wings are gray, with a conspicuous broad, longitudinal, white band along the inner 

 «dge, and extending to the outer third of the wing; this band sends out three teeth 



