GROWTH AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF INSECTS 57 



cultivated fields, private roadways, banks of ditches and small 

 streams, and pasture lands. Alfalfa land is a favorite place for 



oviposition, and alfalfa is often seriously 

 injured by this species. It is doubtless 

 due to these egg-laying habits, and to 

 the abundance of food on uncultivated 

 land, that this species always increases 

 enormously on land which has been 

 flooded and then lies idle for a year or 

 two. Most of the eggs are laid in Au- 

 gust and early September. Each female 

 deposits a single egg mass of about one 

 hundred eggs just beneath the surface 

 of the soil. During this season the fe- 

 males may frequently be found with their 

 abdomens thrust deep in the soil, as the 

 process of egg laying requires some time. 

 The eggs are 

 arranged in an 

 irregular yel- 

 low mass which 

 is coated with 

 a gluey sub- 

 stance, to which 

 the earth ad- 

 heres and which protects them from 

 changes of moisture and temperature. 

 Life history of the tent caterpillar 

 (Malacosoma americand). Complete meta- 

 morphosis. With the bursting of the leaf 

 buds in early spring the tips of the 

 branches of apple and wild cherry trees 

 are festooned by the small, tentlike \vebs 

 of the tent caterpillar. Usually the web is 

 formed on a small crotch, which gives it FIG. 73. Web of young tent 

 the tent shape, and farther out on the twig cater P illars over the ^ mass 

 will be found the egg mass from which (Photograph by Weed) 



the little caterpillars hatched, just before the leaf buds opened. 



FIG. 72. Egg mass of the 

 tent caterpillar 



(Photograph by Weed) 



