FIELD BOOK OF INSECTS. 



LIPARID.E 



The best known and worst liked species 

 emerocampa Q ^ f am ^y j s t ] le p resent one w hich is 

 leucostigma 



popularly called the Vaporer or White- 

 marked Tussock Moth. The latter name refers to the 

 larva (Plate LV) with its four white tussocks. This 

 larva is further adorned with three long pencils of black 

 hair, a coral-red head and, in addition to yellow and black 

 stripings on the body in general, two small red protuber- 

 ances on the sixth and seventh abdominal segments; these 

 red swellings are said to be organs which give off an odor 

 disagreeable to the larva's enemies. All in all, it is a pretty 

 creature if it only would not eat the leaves of our shade 

 trees, among which it seems to be no respecter of species. 

 I am not sure how the name Vaporer arose but I remember 

 that my mother used to ask me not to "vapor" around her 

 face w r hen I got to swinging things about. Well, this 

 larva is much given to spinning a long thread, hanging 

 by it from a tree and allowing itself to be swung by the 

 breezes. Perhaps that is the reason for the name. The 

 grayish cocoon is placed on tree trunks, fence corners, 

 and similar places; it is composed of larval hairs held 

 together by silk. The adult female is a stay-at-home 

 for she has no wings. She merely crawls to the outside 

 of the cocoon, mates, lays her batch of four hundred or 

 so eggs on the cocoon, protects them with a firm, frothy- 

 looking covering, and dies. The general color of the male is 

 ashy gray. There are from one to three generations a 

 year, depending on the climate. It is the eggs which 

 over-winter. Slingerland and Crosby note that the tus- 

 sock-moth is beset with many enemies. After mention- 

 ing birds and predacious insects they say "as many as 90 

 per cent, of the caterpillars and pupae sometimes fall a 

 prey to more than twenty different kinds of hymenopterous 

 and dipterous insect parasites. . . . Unfortunately, how- 

 ever, there are fourteen hyper-parasites which work on the 

 true parasites and thus materially lessen their effective- 

 ness. There are also tertiary parasites which destroy these 

 hyper-parasites, thus presenting a very complicated and 

 interesting case of insect parasitism." If you once get a 



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