Insects 377 



the price of fine tobacco. Sometimes a field 

 is hail-beaten out of commercial quality, the 

 leaves bruised and riddled until it looks to be 

 badly worm-eaten. " Green hail " is thus a 

 cant name for worms, specially applicable if 

 they are slothfuUy permitted to ruin a promis- 

 ing field. The worms have sharp horns at 

 the tail — hence are also called horn worms. 

 They are green, with lighter-green markings 

 along the back, round heads full of strong 

 teeth, and many legless feet. If disturbed 

 in their feeding after they are well grown, 

 they raise the head, grit the teeth audibly and 

 eject a big drop of acrid brownish fluid, the 

 juice of the green tobacco. They come in 

 " gluts " — that is, in special numbers. The 

 first glut, hatched early in July, is from eggs 

 laid by flies that were worms last year. 

 The worms went deep in the ground just 

 after frost, changed themselves to blackish- 

 gray shiny "jug-handle" chrysalids and lay 

 dormant until the spring sun was hot enough 

 to hatch them under the earth blanket. 



Since the destruction of a pair of flies 

 means the prevention of five hundred worms, 

 Major Baker set a price on flyheads, and 

 paid it cheerfully. Further, he helped his 

 emissaries all he could in the work of de- 

 struction. Tobacco-flies feed daintily upon 

 dew and honey. The early hatch haunted 



