176 DISEASES OF THE COTTON PLANT. 
inch and three-quarters in length. A longitudinal light- 
brownish line runs doAvn the centre, and two yellow lines 
along each side of the hack, which is somewhat veined 
with black lines, and is of a dark color, marked with black 
spots, from each of which grows a short bristle, or hair. 
Below these yellow stripes, the sides are of a dark color, 
almost black ; beneath this, extends a light-colored line, in 
which the spiracles are placed ; the lower part of the body 
is of a dirty green, spotted with black ; the head is black, 
marked with two lines of a yellowish color, forming an 
angle on the top ; the body is somewhat hairy. This 
caterpillar has six pectoral, eight ventral, and two anal feet. 
The above description applies only to the brightest- 
colored specimens of the grass-worm, as they vary much in 
color and markings, some of them being almost black, and 
showing indiscriminately their stripes. The chrysalis is 
brownish black, and is formed in a cocoon of silk under 
the ground, the sand and small pebbles being so interwoven 
with it as to cause the whole cocoon to appear like an 
ovoid ball of earth ; but it is never found webbed up in 
the leaves, as is the case with the true cotton-caterpillar, 
already described. The moth measures about an inch and 
one-fifth across the wings, when they are expanded ; the 
upper wings are gray, slightly clouded with a darker color, 
and a lighter spot or ring is faintly seen in the centre ; the 
under-wing-3 are of a yellowish white, shaded with gray 
along the margin, near the upper-wings. 
Specimens of these caterpillars were brought to me 
when at Savannah, in Georgia, and they were suspected to 
have injured the rice in that vicinity in the month of June. 
Colonel Whitner, of Tallahassee, speaks of the grass-cater- 
pillar as having stripped fields of grass, in 1845, and also 
as attacking the com, sugar-cane, and upland rice. It has 
