456 
LEPIDOPTERA. 
all their motions. Previous accounts concernino; their habits 
and depredations were fully confirmed by observations and 
information at Salisbury. 
These wheat-worms, or wheat-caterpillars, as they ought 
to be called, if these accounts really refer to the same kind 
of insect, are supposed by some persons to be identical 
with the clover-worms, which have been found in clover, 
in various parts of the country, and have often been seen 
spinning down from lofts and mows where clover has been 
stowed away.* A striking similarity between them has been 
noticed by a writer in the “ Genesee Farmer.”! Stephen 
Sibley, Esq. informs me that he observed the clover-worms, 
in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, many years ago, suspended 
in such numbers by their threads from a newly gathered 
clover mow, and from the timbers of the building, as to be 
very troublesome and offensive to persons passing through 
the barn. He also states, that, if he recollects rightly, 
these insects were of a brown color, and about half an 
inch long. 
I am sorry to leave the historj^ of these wheat-worms 
unfinished; but hope that the foregoing statements, which 
have been carefully collected from various sources and com¬ 
pared with my own observations, will tend to remove some 
of the difficulties wherewith the subject has been heretofore 
involved. The contradictory statements and unsatisfactory 
discussions that have appeared in some of our papers, re¬ 
specting the ravages of these worms and the maggots of 
the wheat-fly, might have been avoided, if the writers on 
these insects had always been careful to give a correct and 
full description of the insects in question. Had this been 
done, a crawling worm or caterpillar, of a brownish color, 
three eighths or one half of an inch in length, provided with 
legs, and capable of suspending itself by a silken thread 
of its own spinning, would never have been mistaken for 
a writhing maggot, of a deep yellow color, only one tenth 
* New England Farmer, Yol. XVII. p. 73, f Ibid., p. 164. 
