STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
779 
TOBACCO-WORM. TIIE NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN STECIES. 
w ith which we have become more familiarly acquainted from seeing it so 
frequently upon the tomato vines ever since this vegetable came into 
general cultivation in our gardens. And it has obtained the names 
Potato-worm, Tomato-worm, and now Tobacco-worm, as it occurs upon one 
ortho other of these plants, most.persons supposing it to be a different 
insect in each case. These three plants are closely related to each other, 
all pertaining to the same Natural Order, Solanaceas, and this insect feeds 
upon each of them without appearing to manifest any preference for one 
over the other. It feeds equally well, also, upon other species of the 
genus Solarium, to which the potato pertains. I once met with two full- 
grown worms upon a vine of the bittersweet ( Solatium Dulcamara ) which 
tvas growing so distant from any potatoes that it was evident they could 
not have strayed from that plant, but must have come from eggs which tho 
parent had laid upon this vine, knowing it to be perfectly adapted for 
nourishing her young. It is probable that it can also nourish itself upon 
the stramonium, henbane, and most other plants of this Natural Order. 
The tobacco-worm which is common at the South and such a great pest 
to tho plantations there, is a different species, but so closely like this in its 
size, colors, markings and habits, both in its larva and perfect state, that 
the two insects were for a long time confounded together. It is now just 
a century ago that the miller or moth of the southern tobacco worm was 
scientifically named Sphinx Carolina by Linnaeus; and it was fifty years 
later in 1802, that our insect was separated as a distinct species by Mr. 
Haworth, who gave it the name Sphinx b-maculalus or the Five-spotted 
Sphinx, Ilubner some years afterwards giving it the name Celeus. I sup¬ 
pose it to have been through an oversight that authors generally have copied 
the original name from Mr. Haworth in its masculine form, which is evi¬ 
dently an inaccuracy. Mr. Clemens in his Synopsis of North American 
Sphingidne, (Journal Acad. Natural Sciences, new series, vol. IV, p. 166,) 
cites Dr. Harris as describing the Carolina in his Catalogue ot North Ameri¬ 
can Sphinges (Silliman’s Journal, vol. XXXVI, p. 294), whereas it is clear¬ 
ly the b-maculala which is there described under the name Carolina. He 
also gives both these species as being distributed generally throughout 
the United States. But over most of New England and New York the 
5 -maculata is the exclusive species. I have no knowledge of the Carolina 
as occurring except in the southern sections of our State, where, and 
throughout the middle States, the two species are found associated togeth¬ 
er; whilst farther south this disappears and the Carolina alone is met with, 
its geographical range extending onward through Mexico and the West 
Indies, and into South America, probably as far as the tobacco grows. 
As already remarked, the two insects are closely alike both in their larva 
and their perfect states. The worms are of a bright green color, their skin 
is wrinkled transversely and is commonly dotted over with white, and they 
arc both marked with a row of oblique white stripes along each side of the 
body; but in the southern worm there are no longitudinal white streaks 
meeting the lower ends of these oblique ones to form the V-like marks which 
we invariably see upon our northern worm. In their perfect state, the 
