Vol. xxii] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS I/I 



few swallow tails were in tlie air and the papaws in full leaf 

 but, alas, the frosts, sleets and snows of the latter half of April 

 stripped the trees of their foliage and froze the larval life al- 

 most to extinction. 



There was some compensation for these losses in the rather 

 abundant appearance of cecropia, luna and polyphemus, but, 

 all in all, the prospect was gloomy. Everything had to begin 

 over again after April 25th ; the trees to releaf and the hardier 

 larvae to struggle through a starvation period, but the fruit 

 was gone. We measure everything by the crop of fruit out 

 here. Common as ajax usually is here all through the sum- 

 mer and as plentiful its eggs and larvae, there was a dearth 

 of its every life stage till August. The even more plentiful 

 andria was scarce throughout the entire season. 



Not till July was there anything at the electric lights. Then 

 the hawks began to come. The freeze that killed the earlier 

 larval life also killed many of their enemies, for the later 

 broods of caterpillars appeared in unusual numbers and fairly 

 healthy, except the Sphinx larvae. 



In August and September larvae were to be found every- 

 where. Lima and regalis on all their food plants, imperialis 

 even more plentiful still, for all the shade trees yielded them 

 and the sassafrases. Cecropia was not so much in evidence, 

 but polyphcmtis was abundant. Then, too, in August and 

 throughout September the great Papilios hovered over their 

 food plants or settled in great bunches about the wet, sandy 

 pool margins or the muddy roadside. From one small butter- 

 nut tree, scarcely eight inches in diameter, thirteen larvae of 

 C. regalis were taken, eight of them well grown, three on a 

 small persimmon tree and others on sumach. 



It was on an east hillside in an old abandoned field where 

 the three of us, Harold Davenport, Virgil Smith and the au- 

 thor, spent a Saturday in September and came back laden with 

 spoils. It was the 24th and a splendid day, and we had de- 

 cided to make a picnic of it, but we forgot the lunch till it 

 was time to quit the woods. The persimmon trees, the sassa- 



