258 Forty-first Report on the State Museum. 



Mr, "William Gray, of Kenwood, inforniB me that four examples of 

 the species (one of which is in the collection of Hon. Erastus Corning, 

 of Albany) were taken by Dr. James S. Bailey, upon the skin of a deer 

 hung up to dry, in the Adirondack mountains. The species would 

 seem, from the above collections, to favor high elevations. 



*Melittia cucuRBiTJi; {Harris). — The following memoranda on the 

 squash- vine borer have been kindly furnished me by Mr. J. P. Devol, of 

 Petersburg, Va., in consideration of a published request for informa- 

 tion upon the life-history of the species : 



Ju.ne 24:th, found two vines of Boston marrowfats dying, from which 

 the borers had escaped and entered the ground. 



July 3d, dug up a larva from two and a half inches beneath the 

 surface of the ground, at about two inches from the root-stalk. 



July 8th, a larva found in a leaf-stalk, two feet distant from the stalk. 



Hyppa xylinoides Ouenee. — A caterpillar, which proved when the 

 moth was disclosed on July twelfth after a probable pupation of 

 twelve days, to be this species, was taken June twenty-eighth, feeding 

 on the leaves of raspberry. It attained a length of one inch and 

 one-fourth. It was of a rich brown color throughout, and in shape, 

 regularly increasing in size from its front to its eleventh segment, 

 recalling the form of Amphijjyra pyrmnidoides. After feeding heartily 

 in confinement, mostly at night, on leaves famished it, it spun up 

 among some leaves in the box, as if this was its ordinary habit. 



Erebus odoba {Linn.). — As examples of this large and beautiful 

 noctuid are of rare occurrence in the State of New York, it may be 

 noted that a female was identified by me, which had been taken at 

 Oxford, Chenango county. Another instance of its occurrence, some- 

 what remarkable from the late date of its capture, is that of a male, 

 taken at Schoharie, N. Y., within a wood-shed on November 2, 1858, 

 in perfect condition (now in my collection), except as it had been 

 injured by its fluttering on the pin with which it had been roughly 

 impaled by the small boy who captured it. 



Other recorded New York captures, are : a female, at Parkville, L. 

 I., on June 16, 1880 {Papilio, ii, 1882, p. 18) ; an examj)le, flying about 

 a room, at New Dorp, Staten Island, in September of 1887; and two 

 other sijecimens, on Staten Island, during the last few years, one " at 

 sugar " and the other in a barn {Proceed. Nat. Sci. Assoc, of Staten 

 Island, for May 12, 1888). 



Although a southern form, and question has been made of its 

 breeding in the northern localities where it has been found, Mr. 



