548 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
The insect figured in Dr. Emmons’ volume, plate 45, fig. 2 
and mentioned in the text as being a common species of Agrotis, 
is the Hadena arnica of Stephens. 
Although more than a dozen other species of Dart-moths are 
known to me, those now described will suffice as examples of 
the insects whose eggs produce the cut-worms. Though so 
common, they are seldom seen in the day time, being then at 
rest, secreted in dark situations, such as the crevices in stone 
walls and the cracks under the clapboards of buildings. By 
looking behind the window-shutters of my office at any time in 
July or August, I am able to obtain specimens of the Devastating 
Dart and one or two other less common species. 
These worms have several natural enemies. That universal 
pest of the cornfield, the crow, visits the fields, equally as much 
to obtain cut-worms as for corn, and would probably do but little 
injury to the latter if he could find worms enough to glut his 
appetite. Numbers of them are also destroyed by predaceous 
insects. One of the most common of these is pretty generally 
known to our farmers, who sometimes designate it the “ cut¬ 
worm’s dragon,” from its singular form and ferocious habits. It 
is a large black and rather slender and flat larva of a beetle of 
the family Carabida;, and I presume it is the Pangus caliginosus, 
but those individuals which I have attempted to rear have 
always perished before completing their growth. It is very 
agile in its motions, and roots and buries itself under the loose 
dirt with facility. When not glutted with food, it is running 
about incessantly, in search of these worms, and slays them with¬ 
out mercy, with its powerful jaws seizing them commonly by 
the throat, and regardless of their violent writhings and contor¬ 
tions, sucking out the contents of their skins. M. F. Morrison, 
of Bath, Steuben co., N. Y., gives some interesting particulars of 
another insect enemy of the cut worm, in the Albany Cultivator, 
vol. v, page 18. He says,“A few years since a remarkable insect, 
somewhat resembling the black wasp, but longer, shaped some¬ 
what more like the hornet, but of a shining black, and very 
active, was pointed out to me as the natural enemy of the grub 
worm. Its evolutions when on the ground were similar to that 
