76 



THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



coils itself up there into a sort of ball and sleeps through the long and 

 dreary winter, and about the time when the birds come back and the warm 

 days of spring begin, this bristly creature rouses itself to begin life anew. 

 Hence it is one of the few caterpillars which present themselves to us full 

 grown in early spring, and from its peculiar appearance can scarcely fail 

 to attract attention. It has not to wander far for food, for, being in 

 possession of an omnivorous appetite, it feasts on the first green thing it 

 meets with, grass, or weed, or early plant, and having fed but a short 

 time, it spins its cocoon and becomes a chrysalis. 



The caterpillar is about an inch and a quarter long; its head and body 

 are black, and it is thickly covered with tufts of short, stiff, bristly hairs, 

 which are dull red along the middle of the body and black at each end. 

 When handled it immediately coils itself into a ball and remains for some 

 time motionless. It is very tenacious of life ; we have known the larva 

 to be frozen in a solid lump of ice, and when thawed out move around as 

 if nothing had happened. It sometimes occurs, although very rarely, that 

 this larva becomes a chrysalis early in the fall, and produces the moth the 



same season. We have never 

 met with an instance of this but 

 once, see Can. Ent., vol. i, p. 

 26; its usual course is that which 

 has already been partially de- 

 scribed. 



Fig. 14. 



di=^ 



it*;^ 



/ 'W-» 





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■j£&&' 



Its cocoon, b, fig. 14, is spun 

 in some secluded nook, and is of 

 a dark color, of an elongated 

 oval form and curiously wrought 

 with a network of silk, in the 

 meshes of which are interwoven 

 the black and red hairs from the 

 body of the caterpillar. Within 

 this enclosure the insect changes 

 to a dark brown chrysalis, and remains as such about two or three weeks, 

 sometimes longer, when the moth having burst its shelly covering, softens 

 the silky fibres of which its cocoon is formed by a liquid with which it is 

 furnished, and makes its exit through a hole at one end of the cocoon. 



The moth, a, fig. 14, when its wings are spread, measures about two 

 inches. Its wings are of a pale yellowish buff colour, with a few dull 



a- 



