10 Bulletin of the New Yobk State Museum. 



parent moth, with provident instinct, selects the locality for the 

 deposit of its eggs that offers the most desirable food for its 

 rapacious progeny. 



Experience dearly bought, has taught us the food that they pre- 

 fer, and its attendant conditions. A corn-field upon 'a newly 

 turned sod is the metropolis of the cut-worm, while corn upon 

 clover stubble, oat stubble, and wheat stubble, are places where 

 they love to congregate. 



Their Food-plants. 



In treating of so large a group of insects, and especially, one in 

 which the several species are almost indiscriminate in their tastes, 

 it can serve no useful purpose to present a list of all their known 

 food-plants. A reference to such as suffer the most severely from 

 their depredations, will be sufficient for the present paper. 



Grass. — The amount of injury to grass lands from cut-worms, 

 can only be conjectural, associated as it usually is with those of 

 the white grub and allied species, wire-worms, the larvae of the 

 Tipulidoe or crane-flies, and of numerous other insects. It is, how- 

 ever, very great, for the first half of the active life of many of the 

 species, is believed to be largely sustained by the food found in 

 the roots of the various grasses - — only taking upon themselves the 

 true cut-worm habit when the coming of the young corn, cabbage, 

 and tender garden vegetable invites, after their winter's rest, their 

 greedy and wasteful attack. The extent to which they infest grass 

 lands, is shown in the well-known experience that rarely if ever, is 

 cut-worm attack so serious and so noticeable, as when corn is 

 planted upon a newly -broken-up sod 



Corn. — The fondness of the cut- worm for corn, the most succu- 

 lent of our grasses, has become proverbial ; hence we have the 

 following old distich giving the number of kernels to be planted 

 in a hill : 



" One for the black-bird and one for the crow, 

 Two for ttie cut- worm and three to grow." 



Rarely is a corn-field exempt from its presence. Resulting at 

 times only in a permissible, and perhaps, desirable thinning, yet 

 frequently it compels an entire replanting. The extent of its 

 injuries in some instances will be mentioned hereafter. 



The following species, among others, are recorded as preying 

 upon corn : Agrotis clandestina, A. c-nignim, A. subgothica, A. 



