INSECTS INJURING OAK LEAVES. 117 
After four to six days the second skin is cast and the color has become still darker. 
Head honey yellow. Cervical shield polished black. Thoracic and first abdoinina 1 
segment brownish. Dorsal space light green or whitish, with the medial line and 
subdorsal stripe white, a brown line above stigmata and broad white lateral line. 
Venter light green. Piliferous warts white, furnished with a fine, short, pale hair. 
Four or five days later the fourth and fifth molts take place. (Riley's unpublished 
notes.) 
INJURING THE LEAVES. 
163. The forest tent- caterpillar. 
Clisiocampa disstria Hubner; {Clisiocampa sylvatica Harris). 
Order Lepidoptera; family BOMBYCID.E. 
A caterpillar like the apple-tree tent-caterpillar, but differing from it in having a 
row of oval white spots instead of a white stripe along its back ; the colony spinning 
a cobweb-like nest against the side of the tree; spinning a whitish cocoon, the moth 
appearing early in July. 
The nests of this caterpillar, unlike the prominent tents of C. americana, 
so abundant in wild-cherry trees and neglected orchards, are seldom 
seen, as they are of so slight a texture and are so much less conspicuous 
objects than the tent-like whitish nests of C. americana ; but the cater- 
pillars are not infrequently met with. After spinning, about the middle 
of June in the Northern States, a dense, oblong cocoon, the caterpillar 
lies in it about twenty days, the moth appearing the early part of July, 
It occurs in the Atlantic and Southern States. Fitch states that it also 
occurs on the apple and cherry, the walnut, and other trees. Dr. Kiley 
informs me that this is as destructive as any caterpillar to the foliage of 
the oak in the Southern States, being far more injurious than stated by 
Fitch, who quotes with disapproval Abbot's statement (Insects of Geor, 
gia, p. 117) that they are " sometimes so plentiful in Virginia as to strip 
the oak trees bare.' 7 
Boisduval states that this species occurs rarely in California, but Mr. 
Stretch states that " the occurrence of this species in California, or even 
on the Pacific coast of North America, is unknown" to him. (Papilio,!, 
68.) 
Mr. James Fletcher* reports that this tent-caterpillar was very 
injurious in 1884 in parts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, "entirely 
defoliating large tracts of hard-wood bush." 
" It feeds on leaves of different kinds of trees, such as the different 
kinds of oak, but seems to do best on the black oak (Quercus tinctoria) 
and laurel oak (Q. imbricaria), though it will feed also on post oak (Q. 
obtusiloba) and other species. Found also feeding on hickory, locust, 
plum, cherry, apple, and peach." (Kiley's unpublished notes.) 
The caterpillar. — Pale blue, sprinkled over with black points and dots. Along the 
middle of the back is a row of ten or eleven oval or diamond-shaped white spots ; be- 
hind each of these spots is a much smaller white spot, occupying the middle of each 
* Report of the Entomologist, 1885. Ottawa. 
