454 
L E I> I D 0 P T E R A . 
According to him, it had been known for years in the west- 
ern part of New York ; and it was not so much the new 
appearance of the insect, as its increase, which had caused 
alarm respecting it.* Mr. Nathaniel Sill, of Warren, Penn- 
sylvania, has given a somewhat different description of it.f 
On threshing his winter-wheat, immediately after harvest, 
he found among the screenings a vast army of this new en- 
emy. He says that it was a caterpillar, about three eighths 
of an inch in length when fully grown, and apparently of 
a straw color ; but, when seen through a magnifier, it was 
found to be striped lengthwise with orange and cream-color. 
Its head was dark brown. It was provided with legs, could 
suspend itself by a thread, and resembled a caterpillar in all 
its motions. 
This insect ought not to be confounded with the smaller 
worms found by Mr. Sill in the upper joints of the steins 
of the wheat, and within the kernels, until their identity 
has been proved by further observations. It appears highly 
probable that Mr. Gaylord’s and Mr. Sill’s wheat-caterpillars 
are the same, notwithstanding the difference in their color. 
Insects, of the same size as these caterpillars, and of a 
brownish color, have been found in various parts of Maine, 
where they have done much injury to the grain. Unhke 
the maggots of the wheat-fly, with which they have been 
confounded, they remain depredating upon the ears of the 
grain until after the time of harvest. Immense numbers 
of them have been seen upon barn-floors, where the grain 
has been threshed, but they soon crawl away and conceal 
themselves in crevices, where they probably undergo their 
transformations. Mr. Elijah Wood, of Winthrop, Maine, 
says that the chrysalis has been observed in the chaff late 
in the fall. if A gentleman from the southern part of Pe- 
nobscot County informs me that he winnowed out nearly 
a bushel of these insects from his wheat, in the autumn of 
* The Cultivator, Vol. VI. p. 43. 
J New England Farmer, Vol. XVII. p. 73. 
f Ibid. p. 21. 
