24 INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



happens, for (with a few exceptions, such as the pro- 

 pensity of some quadrupeds to crop the young shoots 

 of the yew,) nothing will induce them to eat any 

 plant which is not their natural food ; and we have 

 frequently remarked that when cut herbage was given 

 to domestic animals they would toss aside the species 

 they did not like, and even reject them when they 

 accidentally got into their mouths with others. Grass 

 is very commonly eaten by them all ; but of other 

 plants, the horse, the cow, the sheep, the goat, and 

 the hog make each their favourite selections, — the 

 goat, for example, feeding greedily on the water- 

 hemlock {Cicuta virosa)y which is a deadly poison 

 to cows. * 



Insects, it would appear, are still nicer than cattle 

 in their selection of food, and of course in the 

 acuteness of their taste. The caterpillar of the antler 

 moth {Charceas gram'mis, StephExNs), though it 

 feeds on a variety of grasses, and sometimes com- 

 mits such ravages in the meadows of Sweden as to 

 endanger the lives of the cattle for want of food, does 

 not touch the fox-tail grass (Mopecurus) ; yet to us 

 the leaves of this grass taste little, if anything, different 

 from some of those which it so greedily devours. 

 The caterpillar of the ringlet-butterfly {Hipparc/iia 

 Hyperanthus, Fabr.), again, feeds only on one spe- 

 cies of grass, the annual poa {Poa annua), while 

 the caterpillar of the gate-keeper (H. Pampliilus) 

 confines itself to the dog's-tail grass {Cynosurus 

 cristatus). | 



De Geer remarked that a sort of caterpillar, found 

 indifl^erently on the poplar and the sallow, would only 

 eat the leaves of the sort of tree on which it was 

 hatched ; for those hatched on the poplar would ra- 



* See Linnaeus, Lachesis L^pponica ; Horticultural Journ. 

 p. 242 ; and Insect Transformations, p. 7b. 

 t Stewart's Elements, ii, 131 — 69. 



