BROWN-TAIL MOTH AND OTHER ORCHARD MOTHS. 



165 



yellow; bright red heads, with a humped first abdominal seg- 

 ment to match ; and short black spines arranged in rows. The 

 broods are gregarious and if found while the caterpillars are 

 young, the whole colony can frequently be removed with a small 

 branch on which they are clustered, and destroyed. By jarring 

 the branch they can be brought to the ground and killed there. 

 Arsenical sprays will kill them, but as the caterpillars occur from 

 July to October, the presence of ripe fruit often debars the use 

 of poison. 



These caterpillars were reported this season from Skowhegan, 

 Farmington, Dexter, Eliot, Kittery, Sebago Lake, Turner, 

 Wiscasset and Orono. Hymenopterous parasites were bred 

 from all the specimens received from Eliot, but none of the 

 caterpillars from the other places were attacked, although they 

 were nearly full grown at the time they were collected. 



promethea moth. Callosamia promethea. 

 cecropia moth. Samia cecropia. 



These two large and beautiful moths are included, not because 

 they seem likely to do much harm in the State, but because their 

 cocoons, found upon trees in the winter, are frequently mistaken 

 for the winter nests of the brown-tail moth. Figures 20, 21, 

 and 22. 



Fifty-three promethea cocoons, gathered from wild cherry 

 and barberry bushes, were brought into Kittery last March for 

 brown-tail moth nests. The collector, a bright little lad, was told 

 that each contained a single brown object which would change 

 to a large moth in the spring, and not a lot of little caterpillars 

 such as the winter nests held. "But," he protested "I did open 

 one and there was not just one big thing in it, but a whole lot 

 of little ones." A second cocoon opened in his presence 

 revealed, indeed, not a single brown pupa, but nineteen tightly 

 packed cells, each containing the pupa of a Hymenopterous 

 parasite. Only nine of the fifty-three cocoons yielded moths. 

 All the rest were parasited, — twenty-two red and black Ich- 

 neumon flies emerging from a single cocoon which had been 

 placed alone in a glass. Evidently there is no immediate danger 

 from the promethea moth ! 



