CANKERWORMS — SNODGRASS 



319 



particularly in old neglected apple orchards where insects have 

 been allowed to lead their lives unchecked, and in elms along city 

 streets and in parks and woodlands. They are most easily dis- 

 covered sitting on the trunks of the trees, where eventually they 

 make their way after leaving the earth. Here they often remain 

 at one spot all day or for several days, especially if the weather 

 should turn bleak and raw, as it is likely to do during March and 

 April, especially in the more northern latitudes, somtimes with 

 cold rains, and freezing temperatures at night, and sometimes 

 with snow yet on the ground. 



A gray spot against the bark of the tree trunk, on closer inspection, 

 proves to be a living thing with an oval, furry body about half 

 an inch long, six long sprawling legs, a pair of slim antennae, and 

 two large black eyes (fig. 1). It curi- 

 ously suggests a moth with the wings 

 cut off, and, indeed, no better simile is 

 needed, since the creature is a moth 

 with its wings so reduced by nature 

 that but stubs of them remain (fig. 2). 

 Entomologists know this insect as the 

 female moth of the spring cankerworm 

 iPaleacrita veniata) . 



An insect that comes out at such an 

 unseasonable time of the year can not 

 expect to find anything to eat; and, in 

 fact, the cankerworm moth has no such 

 expectations, her business is of quite a 

 different nature. She comes bearing a 

 load of eggs which are to produce her ^'«a..™?Sr'^n" Sve*^' atSt 



offspring, and she must deposit these above,^ in resting position below 



eggs on the tree sufficiently in advance 



of the time when the leaf buds will open to allow the young to 

 develop and be ready to hatch when their food is ready, be- 

 cause the offspring of this moth will be a brood of hungry, leaf- 

 feeding caterpillars. The mother moth, therefore, has no concern for 

 herself; for the sake of her progeny she endures all the hardships 

 of weather that may come at this season, low temperatures, chilling 

 winds, soaking rains, perhaps snow. Few other insects could endure 

 unprotected what the cankerworm moth habitually encounters, which 

 again demonstrates the physiological differences that may exist be- 

 tween closely related creatures, and which cause them to react very 

 differently to the same external conditions. 



The oval body of the cankerworm moth is little more than a bag of 

 ■ eggs. In the forward parts there are the muscles necessary for 



