236 YELLOW-NECKED WORM ITS HISTORY. 



gnawing the margin, which rapidly melts away as they progress 

 in their operations. If at rest they are all crowded together as 

 closely as they can stow themselves, upon the twig where they 

 have last been feeding, clinging to it with their four middle 

 pairs of feet and with the ends of their bodies raised upwards. 

 If the limb be touched or any other alarm is given them they 

 all suddenly throw their tails upward at right angles with the 

 body and curve their heads backward over their backs, with 

 their anterior pairs of feet projecting outwards and resembling 

 little black prickles; and they remain rigidly fixed and motion- 

 less in this grotesque posture for several moments and until the 

 apprehended danger has passed away. 



The moths begin to make their appearance upon the wing each 

 year as early as the middle of June and continue till the end of 

 July. Each female deposits her whole stock of eggs in a single 

 clustre upon the under side of one of the leaves at the end of a 

 limb. The eggs are from seventy to a hundred in number, white, 

 globular, about three-hundredths of an inch in diameter, placed 

 side by side in nearly straight rows, and securely glued to each 

 other and to the surface of the leaf. The young worm gnaws a 

 large opening through the top of the shell to make its exit. 

 Those eggs which are first laid are hatched about the twentieth 

 of July; others are fully a month later in giving out their broods. 

 Thus some colonies of worms that are almost full grown will be 

 met with when others are small and but a few days old. 



The young worms eat only the pulpy under surface of the leaf, 

 leaving its upper surface and veins entire. But when the brood 

 has thus fed upon two or three leaves they acquire sufficient 

 strength to consume the whole substance of the leaf, so that only 

 its stem and a part of the mid-vein is left. The tender succulent 

 leaves growing at the end of the limb where the worms have 

 been placed by their parent, are first devoured ; and as the worms 

 advance in size and become more robust, they gradually as they 

 move along down the limb come to leaves which are older and 

 more tough and leathery, such as they would not have been able 

 to feed upon when they were young and small. When the last 

 leaves upon one twig or branch have been consumed, they crawl 

 away to another, to finish their meal. Two or three stragglers 



