270 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO VEGETATION. 



themselves in walls, under stones, in hay-stacks and mows, in 

 wood-piles, and in any other places in their way, which will 

 afford them the proper degree of shelter during the winter. 

 Here they make their coarse hairy cocoons, and change to 

 chrysalids, in which form they remain till the following sum- 

 mer, and are transformed to moths in the month of June. In 

 those cases where, from any cause, the caterpillars, when 

 arrived at maturity, have been unable to leave the marshes, 

 they conceal themselves beneath the stubble, and there make 

 their cocoons. Such, for the most part, is the course and dura- 

 tion of the lives of these insects in Massachusetts ; but in the 

 Middle and Southern States two broods are brought to perfec- 

 tion annually; and even here some of them run through their 

 course sooner, and produce a second brood of caterpillars in 

 the same season; for I have obtained the moths between the 

 fifteenth and twentieth of May, and again between the first 

 and the tenth of August. Those which were disclosed in 

 May passed the winter in the chrysalis form, while the moths 

 which appeared in August must have been produced from 

 caterpillars that had come to their growth, and gone through 

 all their transformations during the same summer. This, how- 

 ever, in Massachusetts, is not a common occurrence; for by 

 far the greater part of these insects appear at one time, and 

 require a year to complete their several changes. The full- 

 grown caterpillar measures one inch and three quarters or more 

 in length. It is clothed with long hairs, which are sometimes 

 black and sometimes brown on the back and fore part of the 

 body, and of a lighter brown color on the sides. The hairs, 

 like those of the other Arctias, grow in spreading clusters from 

 warts, which are of a yellowish color in this species. The 

 body, when stripped of the hahs, is yellow, shaded at the sides 

 with black, and there is a blackish line extending along the 

 top of the back. The breathing holes are white, and very 

 distinct even through the hairs. These caterpillars, when 

 feeding on the marshes, are sometimes overtaken by the tide, 

 and when escape becomes impossible, they roll themselves up 

 in a circular form, as is common with others of the tribe, and 

 abandon themselves to their fate. The hairs on their bodies 



