PLANTS AND ANIMALS OF THE ATLANTIC AND GULF STATES 



747 



tory of the insect. Dr. William J. Holland, in his "Moth Book," says : "The 

 'bag' or 'basket' of the male insect is smaller than that of the female. The 

 males escape from the lower end of the case in the winged form, and havint^ 

 copulated with the females, which remain in their cases and are apterous and 

 sluggish, die. The female deposits her eggs, which are soft and yellow, in the 

 sack where she has her home, and ends her existence by leaving what little of 

 her body remains after the ova have been extruded, as a sort of loose plug of 

 dessicated tissue at the lower end of the sack. The eggs remain in the case 

 till the following spring, when they hatch. The young larvae emerge, and 

 placing themselves upon the leaves, where they walk about on their fore feet, 

 with their anal extremities held up perpendicularly, proceed to construct about 

 themselves little cones of vegetable matter mi.xed with fine silk. After a while 

 they cease to hold these cones correct, and seizing the leaves and branches 

 with their feet, allow the bag to as- 

 sume a pendant position. They moult 

 within their cases four times before 

 reaching maturity and pupating." 

 Sometimes hundreds of these little 

 bags are seen to be suspended from 

 the twigs of a single tree. 



When the frosty nights of October 

 come along, up through the Middle 

 Atlantic and New England States, we 

 have the annual and gorgeous displav 

 of the turning of the foliage of many 

 of the different s])ecies of trees from 

 the greens of summer and spring to 

 the incomparable tints and shades of 

 the reds, scarlets and vellows that 



BADLY "STUNG," WITH THE STINGS PROV- 

 ING FAT.\L 



Fig. 10 — Here we have a more complete example 

 of the VirRinia Creeper, with the same specimen 

 of caterpillar shown in Figure 9. The latter has 

 been fatally attacked by a female ichneumon Hy, 

 and the masses of white objects almost covering 

 the unhappy victim are the larvae of the para- 

 site On the evening the caterpillar was collected, 

 it appeared as in Figure 9; while next morning it 

 presented the appearance so well shown here. 



FLOWERS OF THE GORGEOUS TRUMPET 



VINE 

 Fig 3 — There is no vine in America that presents 

 a more striking appearance than our Trumpet- 

 vine (Tecoma radicans). Abundant in northern 

 V^irginia, it has been introduced as an ornamental 

 vine by many home-owners at the National Capi- 

 tal. In August its gorgeous vermilion flowers con- 

 stitute one of the glories of the dusty roadside. 



usher in the early months of autumn. 

 Amidst this marvelous color-display 

 there is a no more elegant participant 

 than our Virginia Creeper, especially 

 if the vine be a big one and has grown 

 to exhibit its foliage to the best ad- 

 vantage. As these lines are written, 

 the gray, pebble-dashed south wall of 

 my home is overrun with such a vine, 

 covering as it does many square yards. 

 As the sun strikes it during the day, 

 the thousands of scarlet leaves, inter- 

 mingled with hundreds of bunches of 

 small, round, bluish-black berries — 

 the former all facing outwards — we 

 are having presented to us a sight of 

 peculiar beauty and magnificence — one 

 of the chief glories of America's floral 

 world. Darwin experimented with 

 the tenacious hold of the tendril-disks 

 of this vine, and other writers have had 

 much to say about it. It grows luxur- 

 iantly in Cuba and even in northern 

 Mexico. Many will be familiar with the sight depicted with the camera in Figure 

 10 of this article. The unhappy larva has been attacked by one of our small- 

 est thymenopterous parasites — a repre.^entative of the ichneumon family. The 

 female of this insect, which is about the size of a mosquito, deposits her eggs 

 upon the skin of the caterpillar. These soon hatch out, and the minute grubs 

 work their way into the body of the victim, to feed upon the fat immediately 

 beneath the skin. Later on, and previous to the maturing of the caterpillar, 

 these grubs appear on the surface of the skin, and there weave the little silken 

 cocoons so well shown in the reproduction of the photograph in Figure 10. 

 From these cocoons emerge the perfect insects, and the poor caterpillar invari- 

 ably succumbs to the ordeal through which it has passed. The caterpillars of 

 other species of our beautiful Sphinx moths suffer in a similar manner, and 

 thousands of them perish thus every year. 



THF. SCARLET LEAVES OF THE VIRGINIA 

 CREEPER— ONCE SEEN WILL NEVER BE 

 FORGOTTEN 



Fig. 9 — There is no more beautiful vine in all 

 .America than our Woodbine, or, as it is more 

 generally known, Virginia Creeper. It hjs been 

 called Fsedcra quinqucfolia of the Vine family 

 (yitaceae). Its generic name Psedcra is supposed 

 to come from the Greek term licdera, given to the 

 ivy- Qtiinqnefolia refers to tlie leaf-arrangement 

 of the five leaflets, so distinctly shown in the 

 cut. The beautiful green caterpillar is the larva 

 of one of our best Sphinx moths, the Pholus 

 satcllitia pandorus, a subspecies of the Satellite 

 sphinx. 



