64 THE REPORT ON THE [19 



together, and across the middle of each wing is a cloudy band. Their feelers or antennae, 

 composed of many joints, are long and setaceous. 



Their legs are light yellow in color, as are also the basal joints of the antennae and 

 the mandibles. The tarsi of all the legs have five segments. 



The caterpillars (Fig. 11) when full-grown are about an inch and quarter long. The 

 head, the dorsal portion of the first segment of the thorax, and under surface of the whole 

 thorax are black. The body is dull olive-green in color, and very much wrinkled. There 

 is a prominent zig-zag lateral line on each side at the junction of sternite and plenrite. 

 There is also a prominent V-shaped ridge on the upper surface of last segment, and the 

 depressed areas between this ridge and the elevated lateral ridge are black, as is also the 

 lower surface of the last segment. The antennae are short and 7- jointed ; the last pair 

 of legs are 3-jointed. 



Curiously enough the larva corresponds very closely with an undetermined larva, 

 figured and described by Packard in his Forest Insects, page 852. Dr. Packard does not 

 appear to have seen the adult. 



THE ELECTRIC LIGHT AS AN ATTRACTION TO MOTHS. 



By Arthur Gibson, Assistant-Entomologist, Central Experimental Farm, Ottawa. 



A good deal has been written of late years on the many beautiful and rare moths 

 which have been captured while collecting around the electric lights of cities and 

 towns. The attraction that these lights have for moths, especially in situations on the 

 outskirts of a locality, is really astonishing, and the number of different species secured 

 in a single season from a few visits to these lights is very considerable. Much useful 

 work can in this way be accomplished, and many species which are seldom met with 

 otherwise are quite often taken at the electric lights. 



On warm, close, rainy-like nights especially, particularly in the month of June, 

 swarms of insects of almost all kinds congregate around the electric lights, varying in size 

 from the large Attacus Oecropia emperor moth, down to the tiniest of species. On cool, 

 raw nights also moths are to be found fluttering around the lights, these conditions 

 seemingly making little difference to them, and on nights when it is even pouring rain 

 many species of moths are observable. Even this does not apparently lessen the attrac- 

 tion which the electric lights have for these insects, and on a visit on almost any night 

 during the collecting season, moths of some kind are sure to be found. 



I have often noticed and wondered at the abundance of males, and the scarcity of 

 females around the electric lights. I have taken many males, of numbers of specie?, but 

 have yet to take females of chese, and even amongst our commonest species the males 

 predominate to a large extent. Of course, it must be remembered that the females do 

 not move around or fly such distances as the males do, generally staying near their food 

 plant on which they lay their eggs. The males, on the other hand, being much stronger 

 fly quite long distances, no doubt one reason being their endeavor to search for and locate 

 the females, and in this way they come in contact more readily with the electric lights. 

 Unless, therefore, the electric lights are so situated as to be in close proximity to the food 

 plants, near where the females have emerged, it is likely that the collector would find but 

 few of them. This may be one, and an important, reason for the scarcity of the females 

 around the electric lights. 



Many moths have a habit of circling around the electric light, and in a short time 

 alighting on the telegraph pole, where, in numerous cases, they generally rest a l^ng time, 

 in fact, often until daybreak, and I have even found them there at all hours of the day. 

 Specimens which have alighted on the poles are, of course, mostly easily captured, but 

 those which circle round for half an hour, and even longer, tend considerably to try the 

 collector's patience, but in the end he is often rewarded by either netting the specimen 

 after it has circled lower, or else capturing it when with a sudden dart it descends, 



