384 TENANT!^ OF AN OLD FARM. 



it. (^iieer old Dan ! His clianiclor had a most har- 

 monious setting" in such a quaint old house. 



In our conversation upon the " Tailor Insects," the 

 basket or bag-worms had the first place. I had collected 

 a number of interesting specimens from the old farm 

 and from a grove at Shadybank, the home of one of 

 my neighbors. These had been gathered from several 

 species of trees widely differing in character — the 

 arbor vitte, white pine, larch, cypress, Scotch syca- 

 more, American sycamore or buttonwood, English 

 walnut, silver maple and sugar maple. 



The caterpillar therefore has a wide range in the 

 selection of its food-plant, and thus has immense ad- 

 vantages in the struggle for life and the chance to 

 increase man's struggle. 



"The basket-worm is the caterpillar of a species of 

 moth sometimes known as the house-builder moth 

 {Oiketici). The insects are also called Gancphorm, or 

 basket-carriers, and the Germans call them Sack-tra(jei\ 

 or sack-bearers. These specimens all belong to one 

 species {Theridrypterix ephcmercrformis), which is widely 

 distributed throughout our vicinity. 



" Let us take up our history of the insect at tlie point 

 when it appears as a larva. So far as we know, the 

 eggs are laid by the female within the case, and are 

 there hatched out. The first act of the young worm is 

 to spin around itself a silkin case, open at both ends. 

 This becomes at last an extremely tough substance, 

 narrow at the bottom, widened out at the middle, and 

 again narrowed at the top into a tube, widest at tlie 



