12 , BULLETIN 922, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
HABITS. 
The young larvae feed during the day, largely on the underside of 
the leaves, eating small holes in them. Whether they feed from the 
underside because it is more protected or because there are more 
epidermal hairs for them to cling to is not known. After the third 
molt they eat patches from the edges of the leaves, feeding only at 
night, and dropping to the ground when disturbed, curling themselves 
tightly end to end. During the day they lie coiled at the base of the 
plant, hiding under dead leaves and other debris. 
The larva? are legless but are supplied with pairs of muscular 
fleshy tubercles on the ventrum of the segments and these are used 
in grasping epidermal hairs, edges of leaves, etc. The young larvae 
move about by grasping the epidermal hairs with their mouths, the 
folds between segments, and the transverse folds. Older larvae 
ascend petioles spirally, using the muscular abdomen as a means of 
locomotion, and with each successive advance securing a new hold 
with the mouth and forepart of the body. As this is repeated, the 
larvae move around and around the stem with a spiral motion. 
When handled, the larvae will often emit a greenish saliva, which 
appears to be for defensive purposes, and in addition may pass their 
blackish semiliquid waste. 
The young larva molts by first coiling itself about a bunch of 
epidermal hairs and then crawling out of the larval skin, which opens 
in the head region, leaving the empty skin coiled around the hairs. 
The larvae have never been observed to eat the cast skins. 
The adult, after casting off the pupal skin, which shrivels to a small 
pellet at one end of the cocoon with the last larval skin, soon eats its 
way out and feeds during the summer, ragging the clover leaves and 
sometimes eating the plants to the ground. During the day they 
usually hide under rubbish or in cracks in the ground but have been 
observed to feed, and many have been collected by sweeping the 
tops of clover plants at this time 
FEEDING EXPERIMENTS. 
Feeding experiments were conducted at La Fayette, Ind., to 
determine the amounts of clover foliage eaten by Hyjpera 'punctata 
at different seasons and during the larval and adult stages (Table IV) . 
The amount of food eaten by individual larvae averages 3.09 square 
inches of red clover foliage from 25 examples studied, and of this 
amount 2.48 square inches, or approximately 80 per cent, is con- 
sumed during the last instar. Comparatively small amounts of leaf 
tissue are eaten during the first three instars — 0.019 square inch being 
eaten during the first, 0.087 in the second, and 0.504 in the third 
instar (Table V and fig. 8). 
