458 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW -YORK 



HICKORY. LEAVES. 



first comes out it has a strong odor, exactly like that of opium, or 

 the flowers of the poppy, and the pupa shell has the same smell 

 also. It is common for the larger Lepidopterous insects when 

 newly changed from their pupa state and before they take wing, 

 to eject a few drops of an opake fluid, which is usually of a red 

 color. In farmer times, before this fact was known, a whole 

 brood of a particular species happening to come out on a single 

 night in summer has so covered the leaves and grass with these 

 drops over a wide extent of country as to lead to the confident 

 belief that a shower of blood had fallen — a phenomenon which 

 superstition would naturally regard as an omen of most alarming 

 portent. The fluid emitted by the Regal hickory moth is of a 

 milk-white color and of the consistence of thin paint, and it is 

 more copious than in any other insect I have reared, a single indi- 

 vidual ejecting over a table spoonful. 



183. Hickory tussock moth, Lophocampa Carya, Harris. (Lepidoptera. 

 Arctiidae.) 



In July and August, eating the tender leaves at the tips of the 

 limbs, companies of snow-white caterpillars with rows of large 

 black dots, and along the top of their backs eight black tufts ol 

 converging hairs and two black pencils of longer hairs towards 

 each end; growing to an inch and a half in length and in shel- 

 tered corners and crevices spinning ash-gray oval cocoons with 

 rounded ends, which give out the moth the following June, this 

 being a pale ochre-yellow miller, its fore wings with roundish 

 white spots edged with tawny yellow rings, the hind ones often 

 united together and forming two or three row^s parallel with the 

 hind margin. Width 1.70 to 2.10. See Transactions, 1854, p. 863. 



This caterpillar has been unusually numerous the present year, 

 1857. It has been tenfold more abundant than it was two years 

 ago when my account of it was drawn up. And it proves to be 

 . a more general feeder than has been hitherto supposed. Though 

 it evidently prefers the walnut, butternut and sumach, it is com- 

 mon on the elm and ash also, and I have even met with clusters 

 of these caterpillars upon the tamerack or larch. As they ap- 

 proach maturity they separate and stray off to other trees, and 

 may then be seen on rose bushes, on the apple, oak, locust, &c., 

 the same individual often remaining several days in one place. 



