19 



In this work there is an Excursus, No. xvii, on "Lethargy in Caterpillars" and 

 another, No. xxn., on " The Hibernation of Caterpillars," but in neither is any light 

 thrown upon this question. 



In the same author's " Butterflies " but little more is said upon this subject. On page 

 135, writing of Colias Philodice, he says "winter overtakes at once caterpillars of various 

 ages, chrysalids and butterflies, and probably eggs. The experience of breeders, and the 

 diversity in the time of appearance of the butterflies in the spring, render it probable that 

 the cold season kills not only the butterflies and eggs, but perhaps the chrysalids as well, 

 leaving the caterpillars to renew the life of the species in the spring." But though I have 

 failed to gather from his works any information upon this subject I have learned from him 

 personally and by letter some facts which may be thought to throw some light upon this 

 question. About 35 years ago Mr. Scudder was prodding for beetles in some hole of a 

 rotten stump in winter, at Williamstown, Mass., and came across several caterpillars of 

 Isabella, and breaking at least one in two, found it brittle like an icicle and he believes he 

 noticed crystals within, and therefore took two or three home to his room to see it" they 

 would come to life, which one or more did. Mr. Scudder, however, does not lay much 

 weight on these facts and adds " I may or may not have bi'oken more than one and do not 

 at all remember whether only one or all came to life, but, of course, I 7nay have broken 

 only one and that one already dead." 



I have recently seen somewhere, where I cannot now say, though I have spent hours 

 in searching for the reference, an account of a caterpillar being found frozen into a cake 

 of ice. The finder cut out a cube of the ice containing the caterpillar by means of a red 

 hot poker, and then left the block on the sill outside his window for several days while the 

 temperature ranged below zero. Upon bringing it into the house and thawing out the 

 larva it revived and became quite active, but further experiment was prevented by its 

 sp nnirg its cocoon. 



In Mr. Fletcher's report for 1889 (Experimental Farm Reports, 1889, p. 79) it is 

 recorded that four larvae of the Mediterranean Ylour Moth {Ephestia KuhnieUa, Zeller), 

 were placed in a glass phial out of doors for half an hour when the temperature was only 5 

 degrees above zero F. and as a result were frozen hard so that they "rattled like glass 

 beads against the sides of the bottle." Of the fo-ir, two never recovered at all, but 

 the other two revived partially and retained their natural appearance for about a fort- 

 night and moved their bodies a little though they finally succumbed. The Rev. T. W. 

 Fyles has kindly given me the following particulars of his experience with larvae of 

 Coleoptera. " In the winter of 1864-5 I was splitting up decaying hemlock logs in my 

 pasture at Iron Hill, P.Q., intending to burn them in the spring. On several occasions I 

 found in these logs numbers of the larvae of Orthosoma unicolor in a torpid state. In some 

 cases the water had percolated into the burrows of the insects and frozen around their 

 occupants. One day I picked out a number of the largest grubs from their icy envelo))- 

 ments and found them rigid and seemingly lifeless. I took them to my house and watched 

 them as they slowly thawed into activity." 



Dr. John Hamilton, of Allegheny, Pa., on the other hand, found, as related in his 

 interesting paper in Can. Ent. xvii. 35, that he could not revive specimens of Coleoptera 

 which were unquestionably frozen though some larvae inclosed in cylinders of ice were still 

 found to be flexible and regained activity on a rise of temperature. Though Dr. 

 Hamilton's experience was decidedly against the theory that actual freezing does not 

 necessarily cause death in insects he still admits that a good deal of evidence has been 

 adduced on the other side and that records of the survival of frozen insects cannot be sum- 

 marily dismissed. 



To turn to some of the older writers on entomology I may quote the following from 

 Kirby and Spence's " Introduction to Entomology," Vol. ii., second edition. On page 231, 

 after referring to some very extraordinary instances of the survival of insects under such 

 trying circumstances as immersion in gin for 24 hours and immersion in boiling water, the 

 authors say " Other insects are as remarkable for bearing any degree of cold. Some gnats 

 that DeGeer observed, survived after the water in which they were was frozen into a solid 



