LEPIDOPTERA. < 219 



The caterpillars of the Antiopa butterfly live together in great 

 numbers on the poplar, willow, and elm, on which the first broods 

 may be found early in June. They are black, minutely dotted 

 with white, with a row of eight dark brick-red spots on the top of 

 the back. The head is black and rough with projecting points ; 

 the spines, of which there are six or seven on each segment, ex- 

 cept the first, are black, stiff, and branched, and the intermediate 

 legs are reddish. When fully grown they measure an inch and 

 three quarters in length, and appear very formidable with their 

 thorny armature, which is doubtless intended to defend them from 

 their enemies. It was formerly supposed that they were venom- 

 ous, and capable of inflicting dangerous wounds ; and within my 

 remembrance many persons were so much alarmed on this account 

 as to cut down all the poplar trees around their dwellings. This 

 alarm was unfounded ; for, although there are some caterpillars 

 that have the power of inflicting venomous wounds with their 

 spines and hairs, this is not the case with those of the Antiopa 

 butterfly. The only injury which can be laid to their charge, is 

 that of despoiling of their foliage some of our most ornamental 

 trees, and this is enough to induce us to take all proper measures 

 for exterminating the insects, short of destroying the trees that 

 they infest. I have sometimes seen them in such profusion on 

 the willow and elm, that the limbs bent under their weight ; and 

 the long leafless branches, which they had stripped and deserted, 

 gave sufficient proof of the voracity of these caterpillars. The 

 chrysalis is of a dark brown color, with large tawny spots around 

 the pointed tubercles on the back. The butterflies come forth in 

 eleven or twelve days after the insects have entered upon the 

 chrysalis state, and this occurs in the beginning of July. A 

 second brood of caterpillars is produced in August, and they pass 

 through all their changes before winter. 



Vanessa Inter rogationis. F. Semicolon butterfly. 



Wings on the upper side tawny orange, with brown spots run- 

 ning together on the hinder part, and with black spots in the mid- 

 dle ; hind-wings in the male most often black above, except at the 

 base, and sometimes of this color in the other sex also ; the edges 

 and the tails glossed with reddish white ; under-side of the wings 



