THE INSECT WORLD. 



299 



Fig 



We sometimes find boring in the stems of wheat, corn, pota- 

 toes, and a great variety of other plants a yellowish-white cater- 

 pillar with rather prominent black spots, furnished with little 

 soft hairs and with a black head. This is the larva of another 

 Noctuid moth, the Achatodes zecE. It sometimes does consid- 

 erable, though usually temporary, injury to the infested plants, 

 and is kept in check, as a rule, by its natural limitations. The 

 moth which produces this caterpillar is broader winged than the 

 species previously mentioned, and the primaries are of a deep, 

 somewhat mottled, red-brown. The outer margin is rusty red, 

 especially towards the tip of the wing, and none of the other 

 markings are well defined. The species has not, in my experi- 

 ence, appeared in numbers large enough to make it necessary to 

 adopt remedial meas- 

 ures, and this is fortu- 

 nate, because from its 

 method of feeding it is 

 somewhat beyond our 

 reach. 



Occasionally we note 

 upon grape-vines a 

 smooth, greenish cat- 

 erpillar with broken, 

 rather inconspicuous, 

 lateral lines. It attains a 

 length of from one and 

 one-half to two inches, 

 and differs from the 

 other greenish cater- 

 pillars of the vine by lacking all trace of either horn or eye-spot 

 on the last segment. It pupates a little below the surface, and in 

 due time appears as a moth which is distinctly flattened, has the 

 fore-wings of a mottled, dull, smoky brown, and the hind wings 

 of a dull coppery hue. It is the Pyropliila pyramidoides^ and 

 may be occasionally found during the day hiding in crevices, or 

 under bark, for which its flattened body adapts it unusually well. 

 At night it is attracted to light, and occasionally becomes rather 

 common, though rarely abundant enough to need remedial 

 measures. When it does occur in numbers it is easily controlled 



Pyrophila pyramidoides and its larva. 



