Report of the State Entomologist 



311 



wood-piles, and other convenient hiding-places, are full of them, 

 searching for winter quarters." 



The beetle is represented in Figure 29. It is of a luteous color; its 

 eyes are black. The thorax is marked with four black spots, the 

 largest of which is central near the hind margin. The 

 wing-covers have seven black spots, two of which are 

 common to the two covers. 



It varies considerably in size — the largest measuring 

 one-third of an inch in length. 



The larva is described as yellow, with long, brown, 

 branched spines, arranged in rows of six on each seg- bi'rd^EKiACHNA 

 ment, except the first thoracic segment, which has only bobbalis. (After 

 four. Its several stages, together with the Qgg, have °^°^<^'^s-' 

 been described by Professor G. H. French in the Canadian Entomologistj 

 XV, 1883, pp. 189, 190. 



In seasons of an ordinary abundance of this insect, it may be easily 

 controlled by hand-picking, but in years of such an excessive mul- 

 tiplication as above recorded, it is almost a hopeless task to attempt 

 to attain immunity from its depredations. 



Fig. 29. — The 

 northern lady- 



Sitodrepa panicea (Linn.), 



Beferring to the notice of this insect as a leather pest, in Report iv 

 pp. 88-92, Mr. A. S. Fuller, of Ridgewood, N. J., has 

 called my attention to a communication made by 

 him to "The Hub," of March (?), 1873, under the 

 head of "A Pest of the Trimming Shop." A firm of [ 

 carriage manufacturers, W. S. Bruce & Co., of 

 Memphis, Tenn., reported serious injury to the cur- 

 tains, falls, and cushions of their carriages, from the 

 borings of a " worm," which, upon being submit- j^jq 

 ted to Mr. Fuller, accompanied by the beetle into 

 which it developed, was identified by him as the well-known pest, 

 Sitodrepa panicea. The following are extracts from the letters of 

 Bruce & Co. : 



We have been troubled during the last few years in pur carriage 

 rooms by a bug or worm, which not only destroys cloth linings, but 

 also eats the leather in tops, cushions, and falls, more particu- 

 larly when there is paste, as in the facings of the cushions and the 

 falls. They bore little round holes through the leather on the outside, 

 and in a little while it looks like a sieve, or the nozzle of a sprinkling 

 can. They are worse in warm weather. On tearing apart cushion 

 facings and falls, we have found in nests two kinds of white worms, 

 one short and thick about three-sixteenths of an inch long, and the 



30,— Sitodrepa 



PANICEA. 



