84 Indian Insect Pests. [Vol. L 



In the Museum collection is a specimen of the Noctues moth Agrotis 

 #■ suffusa, bred by Mr. Wood-Mason in September 



1887 from a caterpillar that was said to attack 

 the winter crops, mustard aud linseed, in the Jessore district. 



This, a cosmopolitan insect, which has been recorded as occurring 

 in all parts of India, besides Ceylon, Europe, America, Australia, New 

 Zealand, Africa and China. 



Dr. Riley, in Report of the United States Entomologist for 1884, 

 page 294, describes it as Agrotis ypsilon or the " Greasy Cut Worm/' 

 having- previously described it in the Prairie Barmer, June 2nd 1867, 

 as the " Black Cut Worm ;" and in the first report of the insects of Mis- 

 souri, 1869, page 80, as Agrotis telifera of Harris, while the insect has 

 been described in Europe by Van Rottenburg as ypsilon, and by Hubner 

 as suffusa. Of all the names, however, by which this insect has been 

 called, Agrotis suffusa l seems to be the best known, and it is therefore 

 adopted here. 



Dr. Riley writes 2 : — 



" The larva has a most emphatic and pernicious cutting habit. We 

 have known it cut off large tomato plants that were over six inches in 

 height, generally at an inch above ground. After severing one plant, 

 the same worm would travel to other plants, and thus, in a single 

 night, would ruin three or four. In quite hard, clayey, corn-land, 

 each worm was found to have a smooth burrow, in which it lay hidden 

 during the day, and to the bottom of which it could generally be 

 traced. 



" Nothing seems to come amiss to its voracious appetite. It is reported 

 as one of the species especially destructive to corn-fields and gardens. It 

 destroys young tomato and tobacco plants, and, in confinement, feeds 

 with equal relish on apple and grape leaves, and has been found in a 

 garden cutting off cypress vines ; it is also one of the cotton Cut worms 

 of the south/'' 



Dr. Riley notices that there are probably two generations of the insect 

 in the year, and that there is great irregularity in the time of develop- 

 ment and mode of hybernation :«— 



" The eggs are laid in small batches, and often in two or three layers, covered 

 sparsely with long scales from the abdomen of the female moth. They are pale fulvous 

 in colour, and nearly spherical in shape, the base being somewhat flattened. The 

 polar ribs are not very distinct, and the crown is small. These eggs we have found 

 laid on peach and sycamore leaves, upon which the larvae do not feed. The larva 

 in the first stage is also a semi-looper, the front prolegs being atrophied. The spe- 

 cies is parasitized by tachinidse, which we have often bred from it, " 



1 See " Catalogue of the Moths of India," Cotes and Swinhoe,page 309, for further refer- 

 ences to what has been written on this insect. 



2 Report of U. S. Entomologist, 1884, page 294. 

 1 Riley, I. c. 



