92 



From tlie above it is evident that while clover and corn are 

 perhaps the favorite food of this "cutworm," it is rather indis- 

 criminate in its feeding habits, certainly eating also oats, Irish 

 potatoes, sweet potatoes, and beans. It attacks its food plant more 

 like an army worm than a cutworm, and while it shows no tendency 

 to move in hordes like that species, in a definite direction, it may 

 spread regularly outward from a center of greatest abundance. 



Most or all of the eggs are evidently laid in early fall, chiefly 

 in clover meadows. The larvae pass the winter nearly full grown, 

 as a rule, and have in spring an unusually long period of destruc- 

 tive activity, extending from about the middle of April to the first 

 of June, or a little beyond, preparations for pupation beginning 

 not much before the last of May. The period of dormant larval 

 life in 'the earth is also long, the imagos emerging from the middle 

 of September, to about the middle of October. 



Desceiption of Laeva. 



An extremely variable species, but still easily recognized by the 

 absence of bright or conspicuous markings, and by the broad gray- 

 ish, yellowish, or reddish dorsal band of lighter tint than the rest 

 of the body. 



General color dingy greenish gray, or dusky greenish, varying 

 to dark brown, dorsal space varying from reddish brown to straw 

 color, creamy white, or grayish white, — under a lens, dusky, finely 

 mottled with yellowish or grayish. A more or less conspicuous 

 white median dorsal line, bordered by a dusky shade which often 

 becomes a definite dark line. Sometimes the median white line is 

 much interrupted or obsolete, and^the dorsal space is rarely a uni- 

 form brown with lighter mottlings. 



Subdorsal space with two irregular whitish lines (sometimes 

 much broken), the upper nearer to the dorsal space than to the 

 other lateral line. Area between these lines sometimes a little 

 lighter than that above or below. A substigmatal whitish line, 

 sometimes obsolete; venter slightly greenish, generally lighter than 

 sides, but sometimes neutral gray or not different from lateral 

 areas. 



Spiracles black ; pilif erous tubercles rather small, bearing short 

 and inconspicuous hairs. The inner dorsal row of tubercles very 

 small (especially on posterior segments), well within the dorsal 

 band, the outer dorsal row just at its margin; the ujjper lateral 

 row a little below the lower L'lteral whitish line; the' lower lateral, 

 larger and behind spiracles. Another row of tubercles at some 

 distance below spiracles. 



Head rugosoly punctate, yellowish brown, much reticulate with 

 dusky, reticulations thickening each side to form curved blackish 

 bands, approaching each other in the middle and diverging and 

 narrowing to base oE the mandibles. Side of head sometimes also 

 with a longitudinal dusky streak and a dark ocular ])atch; frontal 

 triangle dusky or yellowish, conspicuously rugose, front of head 



