78 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



It is difBcult to specify the causes of the heavy mortality 

 amongst larvae, especially in the case of Lubricipeda, whicli 

 appears to be a protected species, and has thus become one 

 of our most abundant and widely-distributed moths. Being 

 polyphagous it can rarely suffer from want of food. When 

 young they feed in companies ; and both the eggs and the 

 young broods are probably swallowed wholesale by browsing 

 animals. Nature seems to think it no waste to sacriHce a 

 thousand of their lives to feed a donkey ; possibly the young 

 caterpillars give a relish to his dock-leaf. 



I do not know whether small birds dislike the young larvaj, 

 but when fully grown it is, with other hairy caterpillars, 

 distasteful to many birds, and seems to walk the paths and 

 climb the walls unmolested. Whether the dislike of these 

 caterpillars evinced by birds is owing to some disagreeable 

 taste or smell, or to their hairy coats, seems doubtful. When 

 thrown to domestic fowls 1 notice that in the first rush to 

 secure a share of what they probably think is a distribution 

 of ordinary food, the young birds will generally swallow a 

 few ; but as soon as the excitement is over, and they take 

 time for a preliminary peck, young and old alike refuse 

 them. There does not appear to be any mechanical difficulty 

 in swallowing the hairy caterpillar, but it is difficult to 

 connect the sense of taste with the horny bill of a bird. 



1 timed the speed of locomotion in many of these larvae, 

 and upon a table covered with woollen cloth found it to be 

 about three yards per minute. Why they are in such a 

 hurry is puzzling, seeing that birds will not touch them, and 

 their insect foes have no need to hunt them, as they feed 

 openly, and are always to be had at dinner-tiuie when 

 wanted. There is a curious and, may 1 not say, singularly 

 human aspect in the contrast between the hurrying caterpillar 

 on the foot-way, and its stupid, gluttonous habit as soon as 

 it finds its food. The activity of a lepidopterous insect 

 seems to be often concentrated in one period of its existence : 

 the agile soaring butterfly is developed from the most sluggish 

 of larvae ; the torpid Arctice from very race-horses of cater- 

 ])illars. The great excess of dipterous parasites is a notice- 

 able fact, the proportion being as 82 to 1 hymenopterous. 



1 have often seen the large black Tachina aesia to all 

 appearance idly sunning itself on the nettles and docks 

 where 1 found Lubricipeda, without a suspicion of its 

 motives; and it is a useful lesson to learn from day to day 

 how nmch is going on around us, before our very eyes, to 



