92 
From the above it is evident that while clover and corn are 
perhaps the favorite food of this “cutworm,” it is rather indis¬ 
criminate in its feeding habits, certainly eating also oats, Irish 
potatoes, sweet potatoes, and beans. It attacks its food plant more 
like an army worm than a cntworm, and while it shows no tendency 
to move in hordes like that species, in a definite direction, it-may 
spread regularly outward from a center of greatest abundance. 
Most or all of the eggs are evidently laid in early fall, chiefly 
in clover meadows. The larvae pass the winter nearly full grown, 
as a rule, and have in spring an unusually long period of destruc¬ 
tive activity, extending from about the middle of April to the first 
of June, or a little beyond, preparations for pupation beginning 
not much before the last of May. The period of dormant larval 
life in the earth is also long, the imagos emerging from the middle 
of September, to about the middle of October. 
Description of Larva. 
An extremely variable species, but still easily recognized by the 
absence of bright or conspicuous markings, and by the broad gray¬ 
ish, yellowish, or reddish dorsal band of lighter tint than the rest 
of the body. 
General color dingy greenish gray, or dusky greenish, varying 
to dark brown, dorsal space varying from reddish brown to straw 
color, creamy white, or grayish white, —under a lens, dusky, finely 
mottled with yellowish or grayish. A more or less conspicuous 
white median dorsal line, bordered by a dusky shade which often 
becomes a definite dark line. Sometimes the median white line is 
much interrupted or obsolete, and the dorsal space is rarely a uni¬ 
form brown with lighter mottlings. 
Subdorsal space with two irregular whitish lines (sometimes 
much broken), the upper nearer to the dorsal space than to the 
other lateral line. Area between these lines sometimes a little 
lighter than that above or below. A substigmatal whitish line, 
sometimes obsolete; venter slightly greenish, generally lighter than 
sides, but sometimes neutral gray or not different from lateral 
areas. 
Spiracles black; piliferous tubercles rather small, bearing short 
and inconspicuous hairs. The inner dorsal row of tubercles very 
small (especially on posterior segments), well within the dorsal 
band, the outer dorsal row just at its margin; the upper lateral 
row a little below the lower lateral whitish line; theTower lateral, 
larger and behind spiracles. Another row of tubercles at some 
distance below spiracles. 
Head rugosely punctate, yellowish brown, much reticulate with 
dusky, reticulations thickening each side to form curved blackish 
bands, approaching each other in the middle and diverging and 
narrowing to base of the mandibles. Side of head sometimes also 
with a longitudinal dusky streak and a dark ocular patch; frontal 
triangle dusky or yellowish, conspicuously rugose, front of head 
