TIGER-MOTH CATERPILLARS. 99 



state of torpidity in which they have now continued for many 

 weeks, without eating, and will thus remain till the breath of 

 spring has roused them to activity, and provided employment 

 for their jaws. The power of Caterpillars, also, in resisting cold 

 has been proved by experiment to be very great, scarcely 

 indeed inferior to that of insect eggs. Those of the cabbage, 

 frozen so stiff as to snap like glass, have yet lived and 

 become Butterflies, while others have revived, after chinking 

 like stones when thrown into a glass. * 



What next have we come to, basking in a ray of wintry sun- 

 shine on a root of dandelion ? It is another Caterpillar, now a 

 very little one, because short of his full growth, not naked, like 

 the tiny sticks of the Mag-pie, but clothed, a la Russe, in a 

 brown fur jacket. 



The moment we touch him, he curls up like a hedge-hog, 

 aiid falls from the plant upon the ground. Prom this practice 

 he is known to some people by the appellation of a " Devil's 

 ring, " though why a creature harmless as a dove should have 

 acquired this misnomer, it is hard to say. His proper, though 

 not, in his present state, a much more fitting appellation, is the 

 Tiger Caterpillar of the Tiger Moth ; he is now more like a 

 little bear, but bear or tiger, we have now at home a box or 

 cage-full of the like animals, born from the egg in the early 

 part of last October. Instead of attaining in a few weeks to 

 the full measure of their bulk, as is the case with the summer 



* Dr. Lister. 



