ORGYIA LEUCOSTIGMA : THE LARVA AND COCOON. 



71 



Fig. 7. — Larva of the White-Marked Tussock moth, Orotia 



LEUCOSTIGMA. 



somewhat gnawed and eroded, when they hereby produce for our ad- 

 miration objects far more beautiful than we look for them to yield." 



The caterpillar is a slender creature, measuring when full-grown from 

 about three-fourths of an inch to an inch and a quarter in length. Its 

 color is a cream yellow, with a broad velvety black stripe upon its back 

 and a broader brown or blackish one upon each side. Nearly covering 



its sides are tufts of pale 

 yellow hairs, which radiate 

 from small yellow tubercles 

 arranged in two rows ; from 

 the upper of these rows a few 

 longer black hairs are given 

 out. Upon the back, on its 

 anterior half, are four erect, 

 short, thick, even, brush-like 

 tufts of hairs, white or creamy-yellow, placed on the fourth, fifth, sixth 

 and seventh rings of the body. The contrast between the occasional 

 bright yellow of these tufts and the white has been so marked as 

 to give rise to the suspicion that they might indicate sex, but the careful 

 observations of Mr. Coleman {loc. cit.) leave no ground for such belief. 

 The same larva has, at different times, shown yellow tufts and white 

 ones, changing from yellow to white and from white to yellow, in- 

 dependently of molting. From the sides of the front ring project 

 forward in a broad V shape, two pencils of black, bearded hairs, tufted 

 at the end and of unequal length, giving them a jointed appearance, 

 the longest measuring a half-inch in length. On the penultimate ring 

 (nth) is a similar pencil of brown and black hairs, which are only tufted 

 at the end of the pencil. The head is coral-red, as are also two little 

 knobs on the back within the black stripe, on the ninth and tenth rings. 

 Fig. 7 shows the caterpillar. 



The Cocoon. 



Next following the caterpillar stage, the insect is presented to us 

 under the guise of a cocoon, attached usually to the trunk or branches 

 of the tree upon which it had fed. Frequently, however, it wanders from 

 its food-plant and seeks more hidden and sheltered locations, as under 

 window-sills, beneath copings, caps of fence-posts, etc. The cocoon is 

 about an inch in length, broadly flattened beneath, of an elongate-oval 

 outline and of a depth barely sufficient to contain the pupa. It is very 

 slightly woven, for, although it is double, consisting of an outer and an 

 inner web, yet, through both, the larva, near its translormation, or the 

 pupa, may often be seen. Woven into the outer envelope are notice- 



