OF TUE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



129 



In confinement I have known them to be piled up on each other 

 in a very irregular way, and I have found them on apple and received 

 them on peach twigs from A. M. Shultz, of Troy, Mo., and R. H. Fitts, 

 of Lawrence, Kansas. Yet the larvre hatching from such eggs refused 

 to eat the leaves of those trees, and commenced to die, until I gave 

 them oak leaves — a fact which does not speak well for the supposed 

 infallibility of instinct. Most of the moths, belonging to the same 

 large family, deposit eggs readily whether impregnated or not; but 

 in'no instance where coition had not taken place have I known our 

 Buck Moth to lay. 



THE LARVA. 



The ordinary appearance of the 

 full-grown larva is given at figure 

 62. The color of the body is brown- 

 black, covered with more or less 

 conspicuous small oval yellow ele- 

 vations or papillae, and with a lat- 

 ^X^f^-^&i^ eral yellow stripe, formed by the 

 confluence of some of the papillae, 

 and by broken irregular yellow 

 marks. The spines, during growth, 

 exhibit all the forms in the figure, 

 and I append, for those interested, 

 a more minute account of the 



Larval CHA^•GES. — The newly hatched 

 larva is about 0.15 inch long. In the first 

 stage it is black and jjfranulated above, red- 

 dish-brown and smootli below, with a row of 

 spots along the middle joints. The prolegs 

 are brown. Head with a few scattering 

 hairs. Spines placed in the normal position, namely, G (in longitudinal rows) on all 

 joints except 11, where two dorsal ones are replaced by a single medio-dorsal one, an 

 additional subventral one eacli side on jts. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10, and an additional medio- 

 dorsal one on jt. 12. They consist of a thickened, sub-cylindrical, polished black stem, 

 nearly as long as the diameter of the bodj^ truncated at tip, which is coronated 

 with three or four short points, and emits a long black bristle, which, under high mag- 

 nifying power, appears barbed (Fig. C2, c.) On the thoracic joints the stem of the six 

 superior rows is forked near its tip (Fig. 62, d.) In the seco?td stacfe, the body remains 

 the same, but the spines, which are now longest on thoracic joints, are more blanched, 

 with more hairs from the main stem, and the bristles from blunt ends comparatively 

 short (Fig. 62, e.) In the third stage, the dorsal spines are still more branched, and 

 often less truncated, so that the bristle is less distinctly separated and forms more nearly 

 part of the tapering spine. The bristles also, especially on lateral spines, are longer 

 and paler. During the latter part of this stage the characteristics of the mature larva 

 are indicated. In the fourth stage, the two dorsal rows of spines on jts. 3 — 10, and the 

 mesial one on jt. 11, are reduced to sub-conical tubercles or warts, fascicled with short 

 stout, simple spines of a pale, fulvous color, tipped with black ; those on jts. 1 and 2 

 remain much as before, but there is generally a fascicle of similarly fulvous spines a 



E.R — 9 



