148 LEPIDOPTERA. 



Larva 3 to 3^ inches in length, naked, rather flattened, 

 smooth, shining, .transversely wrinkled, and puckered at the 

 sides ; incisions of segments deep. Body with a few scattered 

 slender hairs. Head small, shining black, slightly retractile, 

 mandibles very large and strong ; second segment with a 

 large horny plate, having upon it a broad triangular black 

 mark divided by a yellowish line ; dorsal region broadly dark 

 red, incisions lighter red ; sides and ventral region reddish 

 ochreous or yellowish flesh colour ; spiracles and tips of legs 

 and pro-legs brownish. (Fenn.) Very similar in appearance 

 when young and throughout its long life. Feeding under 

 the bark and in the solid wood of Willow, Ash, Elm, Oak, 

 Birch, Alder, Apple, Pear, Chestnut, and other trees, feeding 

 between three and four years and hybernating three winters ; 

 when young in companies of various sizes under bark ; when 

 full grown in a large cocoon of silk mixed with plenty of 

 wood raspings or earth. It is a peculiarly livid and objec- 

 tionable looking larva, and having a habit, when full grown 

 in the autumn, of wandering away from the tree in which it 

 has fed, is then frequently observed, sometimes to the great 

 alarm of timid people. But in any case, from the strength 

 of its jaws, as well as from an unpleasant odour which 

 attends it (on account of which the moth produced from 

 it is called the Goat-moth) it is far from being a pleasant 

 object or desirable inmate. There is even a record — perfectly 

 reliable, I believe — of a larva, found wandering, shut up in 

 a wooden cigar box, and placed inadvertently upon a piano- 

 forte, that it gnawed its way through the bottom of the box, 

 and through the polished wood of the instrument, in its 

 determination to escape. But if placed in an earthen pot 

 without holes, or even in a large tin, and supplied with 

 plenty of fresh sweet sawdust — not pine nor deal sawdust — it 

 may readily be reared. Where plentiful it is most destructive 

 to trees, eating the solid wood until the trunk can no longer 

 support the weight of the branches. Mr. Newman attributes 

 the destruction of thousands of willows in the Thames Valley 



