STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 
457 
HICKORY. LEAVES. 
out the beginning of July, of a bright red color with two yellow 
stripes on the thorax, its fore wings olive grayish or lead-colored 
with red stripes on the veins and light yellow oval spots mostly 
in a row parallel with the hind margin, the hind wings paler red 
with their anterior outer border and a large irregular triangular 
snot on their inner side light yellow. Width 5.00 to 6.00. 
The larva of this splendid insect feeds upon the butternut and 
sumach as well as on the walnut and hickory, and at the south 
it is common upon the persimmon also. Its large size and long 
horns with branching prickles give it a truly formidable aspect, 
from whence it has acquired the name of “The horned devil” 
among the negroes at the south. It may be handled, however, 
without harm, as its prickles do not possess the pow r er of stinging 
which belongs to those of the Io larva; and this frightful looking 
worm eventually becomes one of the largest, prettiest insects of 
our country. It is rarely met with in our State and only in its 
southern part. Some of its eggs sent in a letter from Philadelphia 
by Mr. George Newman enabled me to rear this insect and observe 
its transformations, and from these the specimen of the larva in 
the Entomological Museum of the Society was obtained. When 
reared in a colder climate than that to which it is native it is 
retarded beyond its usual period in completing its transformations, 
and thus its young do not have sufficient time to attain their 
growth before the season closes. It is therefore impossible to 
naturalize this elegant insect in the middle and northern parts of 
our State. The eggs sent me hatched mostly upon the 22d of 
July, and placed upon the sumach, the thriftiest one of the larva 
finished feeding and buried itself the 8th of September, but it was 
not till the 25th of the following July that the moth made its 
appearance. The pupa lies naked in the earth, without forming 
any cocoon. It is about two inches long and three-fourths of an 
inch in diameter, with rather deep transverse furrows at the sutures 
and wholly destitute of any rows of minute teeth. It has a small 
round elevation at its tip, like the head of a nail, and from the 
centre of this elevation two small blunt points project. It is of a 
bluish black color and the inside of the shell after the moth has 
left it is of a pale blue color and nacre-like, resembling the mother 
of pearl on the inner surface of a clam shell. When this moth 
