State Agricultural Society. 
903 
LARVA DESCRIBED. LIVES SEPARATE AND ALONE. 
out of tho centre of each petal, the holes all being of the same 
size and shape, the work appearing at first glance to have been 
done artificially and in a most dextrous manner. 
The larva is cylindrical, tapering slightly at each end, and grows to one inch 
in length, when crawling elongating itself to 1.15, and is 0.18 thick. It is clothed 
with line, shortish, scattered hairs which are placed symmetrically. Its ground 
color is pale green, of a yellowish or apple green tint when full grown, but usually 
pea green when it is smaller. Along the middle of its back is a stripe of a deeper 
grass green color, and a similar one upon each side of the back. These three stripes 
extend from the neck to the middle of the penultimate segment. Each of tho 
lateral stripes has a dull cherry red spot at its anterior end, placed on each side 
of the middle of the neck or first ring, and in rare instances the anterior ends of 
these lateral stripes are of this color for a short distance. Before it is fully grown 
the lateral stripes are sometimes faint or wholly wanting; and low down on each 
side is an elevated fold of the skin which forms a faint stripe of a paler color than 
the ground. The head is a third narrower than the neck and is held obliquely 
downward and forward. It is slightly paler than the body and is clothed with 
fine erect hairs. 
A variety of the larva occurs, of a dull pale brownish yellow color, with the 
stripes olive or dull brownish green. In one instance a young larva 0.G0 long was 
observed wholly destitute of the red spots upon the neck. 
These worms exhale a disagreeable odor, which is particularly 
strong and offensive when several are placed together in a closed 
box. When they are thus confined they soon become wet with 
perspiration, and die in one or two hours. They are slow in their 
motions and arc very unsocial and intolerant of each other. If one 
meets another they act very cross and spiteful, and turn away to 
avoid each others’ vicinity. They live solitary, each one remaining 
upon his own raceme of flowers and travelling only the few steps 
from one flower bud to the next. And if the branch is cut off and 
inserted in a flower pot of earth the worm persistently remains 
upon it, even after it has ceased to flower, aud refuses to forsake it 
until the cravings of hunger oblige him to wander away and seek 
sustenance elsewhere. He then spins a silken thread from his 
mouth, perhaps as a clue to guide him back to his own branch 
again should he be unsuccessful in finding a new residence; for he 
does not appear to spin this thread ordinarily in passing from one 
flower bud to another, nor does he usually suspend himself by a 
thread when knocked or falling from the place where he is stand¬ 
ing. One of theso worms which I placed in a glass jar in which 
was a young bug which I was rearing—one of the Reduvius group, 
which subsists upon and destroys other insects and their larvae— 
