ON SOME LEPIDOPTEROUS LARV^ 88 



it. Following Miss Ormerod's illustration of this, I am 

 pleased to be able to show a portrait of a young larva 

 kindly lent me by Mr. Charbonnier. Here it will be seen 

 that the body is pretty evenly covered_wit!i hairs : the large 

 tufts of the full-grown larva have not yet been developed. 



At the February meeting of the Entomological Society of 

 London attention was called to an instance in which the eye 

 of a boy was affected by inflammation caused by the hairs of 

 L. ruhl^ the Fox Moth. It was stated that the attack re- 

 curred after an interval of nineteen weeks, and that in 

 several Continental cases this recurrence had been found 

 to take place, and in some instances permanent injury to the 

 eye had followed. Mr. Blaudford mentioned that certain 

 caterpillars had hairs of two kinds, some of them being- 

 barbed ; and I may say that my own microscopic examin- 

 ation of the hairs of L. rubi confirms this. Mr. Blandford 

 said that the number of barbed hairs on a larva of B. pro- 

 cessionea had been estimated at 720,000. He further stated 

 that there was no evidence of poison glands, and that the 

 property of the hairs was purely mechanical, experiments 

 carried out by Staff-Surgeon Llibbert appearing to be con- 

 clusive. In the present instance two hairs were extracted 

 from the eyelid of the patient. Some of the cases of injury 

 recorded on the Continent have arisen from children 

 thoughtlessly throwing the caterpillars at one another. 



A hint may here be given to any one commencing an 

 entomological collection never to touch caterpillars, whether 

 hairy or otherwise, with the hand at all ; you thus avoid all 

 risk arising from the unpleasant properties of these hairs, 

 and obviate any possible injury to the larva from the touch 

 of the hand. It must never be forgotten that a caterpillar's 

 cylindrical body contains fluid under pressure, and a very 

 slight touch causes it to bleed, and it may be taken as a 



