26 REPORTS OF OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS. 



This caterpillar lias a polished appearance, and in certain lights 

 shows a slight brassy reflection. When first exhumed from heneatn 

 dead leaves or other litter, it feigns death, but soon makes its escape 

 by crawling beneath some object, its movements being quite rapid. It 

 pupates within a small cell in the earth. 



There are two well-marked broods of these caterpillars each year. 

 The first brood pupates in January and February and the moths issue 

 about six weeks later. The caterpillars of the second brood assume 

 the chrysalis state in the months of June and July and are changed to 

 moths from the first week in September to the middle of October. 



It is very probable that the food of the caterpillars of this moth 

 ordinarily consists of the leaves of various kinds of weeds, and that 

 their fondness for green fruit has only recently been acquired. I have 

 repeatedly found them beneath stones, dead weeds, and other litter 

 lying upon the ground, and on the 9th of June, 1888, I found forty five 

 of these caterpillars beneath dead weeds lying upon the ground under 

 some orange trees in the city of Los Angeles. 



Up to the present time this species has been reported only from Cal- 

 ifornia. 



Associated with these caterpillars were the following predaceous 

 beetles, which doubtless prey upon them: Calosoma per egrinator, Cala- 

 thus rujicollis, Platynus maculicollis, Ptero stick us vicinus, Amara cali- 

 fornica, and Amara shipida. With two exceptions all of these beetles 

 when exhumed endeavored to hide themselves again, but the Calosoma 

 and Amara stupida would nearly always start up the trunk of the 

 nearest tree. In the month of May of the present year I saw an allied 

 species, Calosoma latipenne, engaged in feeding upon a caterpillar of 

 Agrotis saucia. Indeed, this habit is so prevalent among the different 

 species of Calosoma that they are called " caterpillar hunters." 



The caterpillars above described are but little subject to the attacks 

 of internal parasites. I have bred but a single specimen from a large 

 series of caterpillars placed in my breeding cages from time to time. 

 The parasite referred to is alargeTachina fly, which issued on the 29th 

 of July, 1888. It apparently belongs to the genus Encnephalia. 



As to a remedy, the one practiced by Mr. Johnson, of exhuming the 

 caterpillars and then destroying them, is perhaps the most effectual 

 that could be adopted. If it should be proved that these caterpillars 

 will feed readily upon green alfalfa or upon weeds of any kind, quanti- 

 ties of these could be gathered and pressed into balls, which could then 

 be soaked in a strong solution of Paris green and water and placed 

 upon the ground beneath the trees; the caterpillars by feeding upon 

 these poisoned balls would thus be destroyed. Trees might be pro- 

 tected from the attacks of these insects by placing around the truuk 

 of each tree a collar of smooth tin or other obstruction over which the 

 caterpillars could not make their way. The custom of allowing chick- 

 ens the run of the orchard before the fruit ripens will also result in 



