432 TENANTS OF AN OLD FARM. 



this species, hence it has no power of taking food, and 

 lives but a few days in the winged state, during wliich 

 time the eggs are laid. A large number of the nocturnal 

 visitors to our lamps during the evenings of July 

 belong to this Clisiocampa, and so, without knowing it, 

 you are all familiar with the creature, as you have seen 

 its bewildered behavior when it enters our lighted 

 rooms and flutters wildly about the often fatal flame. 



" The eggs are deposited upon the small twigs oi 

 fruit trees in ring-like clusters, each composed of frohi 

 fifteen to twenty rows, containing in all from two to 

 three hundred. They are firmly cemented together, 

 and coated with a tough varnish impervious to rain. 

 The young larvre are fully matured in the egg before 

 winter comes, and they remain in this enclosure in a 

 torpid state throughout the cold weather, and hatch 

 during the first warm days of spring. Their first meal 

 is made of the gummy material with which the egg 

 masses are covered, and their next of the tender buds 

 just bursting. 



" Soon after hatching they begin to spin the tent-like 

 shelter which gives them their name, by stretching 

 silken threads from point to point across the forks of 

 the twigs whereon they have been cradled. As they 

 grow they spin new threads, laying them one atop of 

 another, and extending them to adjoining twigs, until 

 the spinning-work has become a close sheet by the 

 repeated overlays. The structure is now more or less 

 irregular in form, according to the relative position of 

 the twigs which support it. Often the nest is located 



