THE VARIEGATED CUTWORM. 
(Peridroma saucia Huebn.) 
This cutworm is usually to be found in some numbers nearly every- 
where — in gardens, pasture land, vineyards, fields, and orchards, and 
even in greenhouses, as it is a general feeder and able to eke out a liv- 
ing wherever it may happen to be. 
Even in ordinary seasons it appears to have little choice as regards 
the quality of its food — anything succulent, whether the leaves, buds, 
flowers, fruit, stalks, tubers, or roots of plants of the garden, field, or 
greenhouse, serving the larva? as a means of sustenance. It does not 
appear to be especially fond of wild plants, and is not, like the fall 
army worm, an important enemy of grasses or grains, although it 
feeds sometimes upon both when other foods are not available. It is 
seldom noticed attacking weeds, appearing to prefer cultivated plants 
to others. It is one of the so-called climbing cutworms, often doing 
much injury to the foliage of fruit trees, and in seasons of exceptional 
abundance it assumes the army-worm habit. 
There is little doubt, from reports that were received, that this 
habit was assumed in many localities where injuries were noticed. In 
fact, the variegated cutworm was so abundant during the season that 
it became quite generally known as the army worm in some regions, 
as, for example, in the Pacific States and British Columbia, where it 
was most destructive. 
Injury, judging from report, extended from Maryland southward 
to Texas and westward to the Pacific coast. It was most pronounced 
in Oregon, Washington, and northern California, and was noted in 
various portions of Canada. The species was probably present in 
some numbers throughout practically the entire United States and 
Canada wherever truck crops were raised, although injury, as nearly 
always happens in the case of insect attack, was more or less local. 
The insect did not by any means confine itself to garden vegetables, 
however, but was very destructive to ornamental flowers, and the list 
of plants attacked included nearly everything that could be mentioned, 
only a few plants being noticed as exempt from injury. 
The occurrence of this species in Canada was described by Dr. 
Fletcher as one of the most remarkable outbreaks of an injurious 
insect that had ever been recorded in that country, and this was about 
equally true in the States of Oregon and Washington. It is seldom 
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