12 
BULLETIN 746, U. S. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 
FOOD PLANTS. 
Food plants other than sugar cane and corn are broom corn, Kafir 
corn, milo maize, sorghum (Sorghum halepense) , Sudan grass (An- 
dropogon sorghum var. sudanensis) , Para grass, vetiver (Andropogon 
muricatus), and feather grass (Lectochloa mucronata). Bodkin (20) 
records rice as a food plant in British Guiana. 
A large larva will almost fill the interior of a stalk of grass, but 
nevertheless will develop successfully. 
The number of food plants, some of which grow wild about planta- 
tions, makes the species more difficult to control than if it were 
limited to corn and sugar cane, the 
larvae being able to grow to ma- 
turity on wild grasses and the 
adults migrating to the corn and 
cane fields. 
SUMMARY OF LIFE CYCLE. 
Emerging in the spring, the 
adult females deposit their eggs on 
the young plants of sugar cane, 
corn, etc. These eggs hatch, the 
young larvae feeding here and there 
on the leaves for a short time and 
then boring into the stalks. After 
reaching their full development 
the " borers " pupate and in a few 
days the moths emerge. Eggs are 
again deposited, and the life cycle 
is repeated again and again until 
winter, during which the larval 
period is prolonged until spring. 
The overwintering larvae then pu- 
pate, moths emerge and mate, and 
the cycle is repeated. 
Fig. 2. — Cluster of sugar-cane 
borer eggs nearly ready to 
Much enlarged. 
moth- 
hatch. 
DESCRIPTIONS OF STAGES IN LIFE CYCLE. 
THE EGG. 
The eggs are round-oval, flattened, about 1.16 mm. long by about 
0.75 mm. wide, 1 and are deposited in clusters. Beginning at the top 
of a cluster they overlap one another (see fig. 2), like scales on a fish. 
A group or cluster contains from 2 or 3 to 50 or more eggs. The clus- 
ters vary in shape as well as in size, a small one often being irregularly 
round, while the larger ones are much longer than wide — sometimes 
1 One millimeter is about one twenty-fifth of an inch. 
