180 SWIFT-MOVING CATERPILLARS. 



and moth, in their estate of caterpillar, would always outstrip, 

 as pedestrians, their own winged maturity, sixteen, instead of 

 six or four, being the number of legs with which caterpillars 

 are usually provided. This, however, is only the case in cer- 

 tain instances, for hardly do beetles exhibit greater variety in 

 their rates of movement than the larvse of Lepidoptera. We 

 speak, indeed, of all caterpillars as " crawlers ;" but while some 

 " drag their slow length along," tardy as the tortoise, or that 



" Enfant de la terrc errant sur le gazon, 

 Prive d'os et de sang, et portant sa maison," 



others run with the rapidity of "the Hare," an appellative 

 really bestowed for its swiftness, on a foreign species. There 

 are not wanting English runners of the same description. "We 

 may notice, amongst them, as a very common specimen, a 

 caterpillar (that, we believe, of the large Ermine Moth) with 

 a skin blackish or greenish, striated in its length by a broad 

 white line on either side, and thickly covered by a coat of long 

 brown fur, made up of tufts proceeding from studs or tuber- 

 cles.* This, one of the pillagers of promiscuous cates of an 

 herbaceous description, may frequently be seen by roadside or 

 in garden, and usually in company of several messmates, em- 

 ploying his jaws with prodigious celerity on the leaves of dock, 

 plantain, dandelion, marigold, or violet. If we rudely inter- 

 rupt him in his harmless feasting, he rolls up instanter, and 

 falls from his station a defensive feint of death or inactivity, 



* See Vignette. 



