104 
ground through the winter. Mrs. Mary Treat, of Vineland, N. J. v 
says the first brood of the worms live upon the staminate flowers or 
tassels of the corn before the ears make their appearance, or before 
the tassel has come out above the leaves, eating through the 
leaves while they are yet folded around the tassel. As I have taken 
the moths,. as well as have reared specimens, hatched in May, 
I should think her observations correct. In this case the moth must 
lay the eggs either in the axils of the upper leaves, or in the very top 
of the opening bunch of leaves, where the young worms as they 
hatch can find ready access to their food. The brood that works on the 
ears is produced from eggs laid on the silk ; and when hatched, which 
requires only a few days; they feed upon the silk, if the ends of the 
husks are well up above the ends of the ears, till they are about a 
third grown before they reach the ends of the ears. As soon as they 
come to the kernels they work their way round the ear inside the 
husks, sometimes eating only the outside portion of the kernels, or 
boring through the under side next to the cob so that w’hen the husks 
are stripped back the worm may be nearly half hidden in the corn. 
As the corn gets hard their work generally stops, though they will 
occasionally eat into corn that is quite hard. Those that are full 
grown before the corn becomes hard leave the ears to go into the 
ground to undergo their transformations, while others that have not 
reached that stage die and rot in their burrows, these adding to the 
general mouldiness and decomposition that helps to make the corn 
unfit for use. This however, is not always the case. 
The moth is variable in depth of color and shading, but is usually 
of a pale clay yellow with a more or less distinct tinge of olive green, 
the forewings marked with olive and rufous, with a blackish spot near 
the middle of the wing, and a dusky shade near the outer margin. 
The general color of the hind wings is paler than the fore wings,°the 
outer border a dark brown or blackish band interrupted in the mid¬ 
dle by a pale spot. 
Remedies .—I do not know that any insect parasite has been found 
that preys especially upon these worms. The fact that they remain 
hid from sight enclosed within the corn husks would of itself be a 
good reason why they are not destroyed by some of the numerous 
ichneumon and tachina flies that usually serve to keep down the oth¬ 
erwise rapid increase of many caterpillars; hence the remedies that 
will serve to keep these worms in check, aside from the natural in¬ 
fluence the seasons may have on them, must come directly from the 
farmer. My observations point to the following means as in a great 
measure accomplishing the desired end: 
Early Planting —Near the town of Carbondale were two fields of 
corn that were separated only by a rail fence, the one planted early, 
the other late. I passed through both fields September 24th, and 
found no worms in the early piece and no signs of their work. w T hile 
in the other field fully nine-tenths of the ears w T ere wormy. There 
might have beep a few ears in the first piece that had had worms, but 
all I would say is that I did not succeed in finding any by examining 
quite a number of ears as I passed through. Of other fields examined 
I found the early planted but little molested, while that which was 
planted late was considerably so. It has been suid by others that the 
