THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



59 



Parsnip Caterpillars — Scorpions—/". ISrcJver, 

 Waynesvilh , Mo. — Tlie green blaclc ami yclluw (.•atci'iiil- 

 lars fouud on your parsnip plants, are tlie lar\ a' uf oar 

 common black Swallow-tail butterfly (rapilin A^tei-ins, 

 Cramer). They occur on the par.snip and carrot, as 

 well as on other umbellate plants, but seldom be- 

 come sufficiently numerous to get beyond our control. 

 The butterllies are tbnil of hovering over and obtaining 

 honey from the flowers of the Phlox, and in extricat- 

 ing their tongues, they generally pull oil' the petal 

 and thus mar their beauty. The " crabbish looking 

 lellows ' ' that were ' ' under a stone on a high dry hill ' ' 

 are true scorpions. The species is the Jiutnus caroUni- 

 anus of Beauvois , and you wiU find an account of it by 

 Dr. G . Lincecum , accompanied with a tigure , on page 

 203 of the lirst vohune of the American Naturalist. 

 It is described as a Texan species, but besides the four 

 you have sent, we have ourselves obtained tw'o, the 

 past summer, from the Iron Mountain region in Mis- 

 souri. "We were not a little suriirised on opening the 

 box to find four of these ' ' crabbish loolcing fellows ' ' 

 alive and coolly twisting tlieir armed tails about, and 

 it required some steadiness of nerve to capture them 

 without getting stung. Their sting, however, is not 

 so venomous as that of certain troi^ical species, being 

 ■ scarcely so bad as the sting of a bee. 



Noxious Insects named. — James If. Parsons, 

 FranMin, If. Y. — 1st. The web -spinning caterpillars 

 that make their appearance on apple trees in midsiun- 

 mer and remain till frost, and which as j ou say are so 

 luimerous with you this year that almost every apple 

 tree contains half a dozen of their nests, must be the 

 common Fall Webworra (Jliiphantria iator. Harris). It 

 occurs also on various for'cst-trecs, and espeeially on 

 the Pignut Hickory . Its moth is of a niillc-wliilc eolnr, 

 while that of the common Tent Caterpillar is hrownish 

 ochre-ycUow. 2d. The other worm inlr>tin,i;' apiile- 

 trees, with a red head and a red hump on its Ijaek, 

 must be the Eed-humped Prominent {Xuto,li,nta i-imcin- 

 ■na, Sm. Abb). 3d. The white hairy cateri)illar on 

 the same tree is probably the common Wooly Bear 

 (Arctia iiinjinica, Fabr.) which we have ohser\ed to 

 swanu occasionally on the apple. 4th. The large worm 

 in the core of your ifpples must be the eoiiuiion Apple 

 ■yVonu orCodUng Moth Worm {C'lir/inai/iKii poinvjallu, 

 L.) 5th. The small worm which "lives in the pulp of 

 the apple, makes lonjj winding roads through it, and 

 appears to come out through the skin , " is in all proba- 

 bility the Apple-man-ot (7>,yy«Af iH.mondla, Wal.sh),^ . 

 which is sueli a pest in (he liuilson Uivcr country and 

 in New England. Heiire tliis pernicious insect appears 

 to be gradually working its way westward. 



Cut -worms destroying recently soivn 

 Wbeat.— r. A'. Alhn, AlUnton, i/i).— The dingy brown 

 worms, with a conspicuous yellowish gray band al<)n.g 

 their sides, came safely to IJaud. They are a spieies 

 of cut-worm; but though we have de'.Miii. lions of at 

 leastii dozen worms of this class, and lia\ e lne.l many 

 to the moth state, vet these which vou send ilillca- IVom 

 them all. They are in all iiroliabili'lv the larva' of some 

 owlet moth oi- other (Family J'"./i//./,(), Iml the sjieeies 

 cannot l)e determined until" we breed lliem. You say 

 that they arc destroying the wlnnit recently sown oh 

 oats stubble, both in your own vicinity and in Franklin 

 county, and that they do not seem io attack any }iut 

 that whirhis soitin on oats stulilih. We can give no rea- 

 son for this singular partiality, but if it proves lobe 

 general, it may serve you as a wcajiou a.gaiiist this 

 enemy, for you will be" able to evade it hy not plant- 

 ing on oats stubble. In the present state of things, 

 lime or salt sown on the laud would be apt to check 

 them. 



Xlie Spincd Soldier Bug. — Irwic llirl-s, Long 

 Island, N. J'.— The insect that was allaeking tlie Fall 

 Wcbworm, (Ilyplianlna tt.'.tor, Harris) ou one of your 

 apple trees, was the same Spined Soldier l!ug illus- 

 trated by figure 41 in tliis number of the A. F. It was, 

 however, not in the perfect winged state, when you saw 

 it attack the worm, but in the pupa state. I3y the time 

 it had reached us it had moiUted into tiie pei'ii-.-t slate, 

 and by its side there lay the cast skin or shell or tlie 

 pupa. The worm that jjou had so provident ly fUpplied 

 it with, by way of provision on the long journey, was 

 dead and sucked as dry as a chip by the" beak of the 

 ferocious cannibal. 



Tbc Preying Mantis, alias Devil's Riding 



Morse, Ktc—Amelie FMii, Jifu-Min CHy, J/o.— The 

 insect, which "the children ' eali Devil's riding- 

 horse , ' ' and which you would like to know the scientific 

 name of, is the Mantis Carolina, of Linna)us. Its food 

 consists mainly of flies, though it is a most voracious 

 cannibal and will devour its own kind as well as any 

 other living insect that comes within its grasp. It dis- 

 dains all dead food, and never makes chase lor the liv- 

 ing, but warily, patiently, and motionless, it watches 

 till its victim is within the reach of its fore -arms, and 

 then clutches it with a sudden and rapid motion. Its 

 appearance is really formidable, and its attitude while 

 watcliing for its prey, quite menaceous, and on this ac- 

 count it IS held in very general and superstitious dread . l^ 

 It is, however, utterly incapable of harming any one: 

 and, as one of our best friends, should be cherished and 

 protected. The female attaches her eggs, in a solid 

 compact mass, to the twigs of trees. Tins egg-mass is 

 deposited whole, and the operation of depositing re- 

 quires well nigh an hour. Thovigh soft at first, the mass 

 soon hardens , and is readily transferred and introduced 

 into our gardens. 



The Pigeon Xremcx — F. Brewer, Waynesville, Mo. 

 — The two four-^vinged flies , each measuring about one 

 and a half inches in length , and each with a black and 

 rust-colored, cylindrical body of the size of a common 

 lead pencil, which has a stout piercer at the extremity; 

 are both of them females of the Pigeon Tremex ( Tremex V^ 

 columha, Linn.) You say they have at least one suspi- 

 cious habit, and that you foiuid them securely attached 

 to an oak tree, apparently in the act of depositing an 

 e,^'g, ami you wish to know whether or not they are 

 exer injurious to fruit trees, or whether they are 

 confined to forest trees. Tliey may be considered as 

 injurious, for the larv;e which hatch from the eggs, fre- 

 quently cause the death of the tree they infest. Though 

 they breed in several difl'ereut kinds of forest trees, we 

 believe they have never been found in any other fruit 

 tree but the i^ear. Hidden, as lliis insect is, in the 

 heart of a tree, it is yet subject to the attacks of two (.,' 

 largo Ichneumon tiles (Piinpla atnita and hinator of 

 Fabrieius) which prevent its liei'omim;' unduly numer- 

 ous. The females of both these lehiieiiiiioii' Hies are 

 furnished with extremely long ovipositors, by aid of 

 which they arc enabled to reach and oviposit in "the lar- 

 v;c of the Pigeon Tremex. 



FlcsU-wornjs^— ft'. W. J. 'Stuart, Houston, Texas. 



You say that eighteen months ago, you placed a can- 

 cer in a bottle of alcohol, where it has remained undis- 

 turbed ever since; but the cork being porous, the alco- 

 hol evaporated, and last week, when about all the alco- 

 hol had left the bottle, •' the cancer began to be coii- 

 \erted into worms , ' ' and that now it is ' ' a living mass 

 of worms." Those which you send are evidently tlie 

 larvie of one of the numerous s|Heies of two-winged 

 flies, belonging to the great .Mima family. The parent 

 fly, attracted to the bottle by the odor, deposited her 

 eggs on the cork, and the yoiiiiL; ma'.'gots which hatch- 

 ed from them, limliii.u' no diilii'iilly in iicnetraliiig the 

 porous cork, immediately (■onmirmril to I'lillil their 

 inis.siou and elearaway the putrid tiesli. If undisturbed 

 they would soon have become full fed and have con- 

 tr.actcd to brown, shiny, hardened pupte, and in due 

 time you would have had a bottle full of livingflics with 

 no ofl'ensive smell. These maggots bear a great resem- 

 blance to the Texas Screw-worin \\ liieh breeds in the 

 wounds of cattle and sheep, specimens of which had 

 been previously sent to us by Mr. Thos. Affleck of 

 Brenham, in your State. 



Fall Wcb-'iirorm on Hickory — P/'ti/'. ]V. W. 

 DanielU, Madison, Wis. — The brown hairy caterpillars, 

 rather more than an Inch long, which are covering the 

 hickories with their webs in your vicinity, are popu- w^ 

 larly known as the FaU ■VVcb-worm. They are the 

 larva! of a small moth (Ilypjiantria A .rt,>r. ITarr!"s) which is — 

 of a snow white color, without marks of any other color 

 whatever. During the months of September and eieto- # 

 ber the worms descend from the trees, tiinl either work ^"'^ 

 themselves a short distance under the surface of the 

 earth or creep under some shelter above ground, where 

 they form slight cocoons by interweaving the hairs of 

 their own bodies with a few silken threads. In these 

 they are soon transformed to sliiuy mahogany-coloretl 

 chrysalids, .and become moths the following June. 



