448 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
fortunate in other particulars. It is exposed to the attacks ot 
parasites. These are minute bee-like insects pertaining to the 
Family Chalcjdid.e in the Order Hymenoptera. They puncture 
the skin of these pretty caterpillars dropping an egg therein, 
from which hatches a minute maggot which feeds internally upon 
the fatty matter of the caterpillar, thus exhausting and eventu¬ 
ally killing it. I once gathered two of these caterpillars which 
I placed with some leaves in a box. Two days afterwards one 
of them was found to be dead, and the other being lively and 
vigorous was removed to another box. Next day, what appeared 
to be the ends of little worms were seen protruding from the 
body of the dead caterpillar. Upon the following day these 
worms were found to be seventeen in number. They had all 
left the dead carcase of the caterpillar and just above it upon 
the side of the box they had arranged themselves in a circular 
row, and had changed to pupae of-a milk white color, 0.12 long 
and half as broad, hanging by their tails with their heads down¬ 
ward and their backs against the side of the box. This was upon 
the last day of July. Next day they had changed to a pale red 
color and had somewhat shrivelled, each having discharged a 
little cluster of clay-yellow grains which were adhering to the 
side of the box at the tip of their bodies. They subsequently 
altered to a black color, and on the sixth of August they hatched 
the winged insects, which were of a brilliant brassy green color, 
with a blackish purple abdomen and white legs, and about the 
same size as the pupte. In an account of the vaporer moth 
which I published in the Country Gentleman in reply to enqui¬ 
ries respecting it from some of the subscribers of that paper, I 
named this insect (vol. vii, p. 235) the vaporer-moth parasite (Tri- 
chogrammal Orgyict). 
This parasite measures 0.12 to the tip of its abdomen, the wings being 
slightly longer. The head is brassy green, as broad as the thorax, three or 
four times as wide as long, and appearing slightly notched in front'when 
viewed from above. The antennae are broivn, the basal joints pale yellow. 
They are composed of six very distinct joints, of which the first is long and 
forms an elbow with the following ones. The second joint is smallest) 
the fourth and fifth are equal, oval, and shorter and thicker than the 
third; the last is boader than the preceding and longer than the third, and is 
shaped like an elongated egg. The thorax is brassy-green and finely sha- 
greened, twice as long as wide, broadest across the middle, the collar of a 
crescent shape and separated by a . very distinct suture, the scutel large, pro- 
