176 STATES OF INSECTS. (Larva.) 
pencil. This last mode of arrangement prevails also in 
the larva of Acronycta Aceris ; but in this the pencils are 
shorter, exactly wedge-shaped, and distinguished by an- 
other particularity, that of springing directly from the 
skin, and not from a tubercle. This is also the case with 
the large caterpillars of Odenestis potatoria, which has a 
double row of short bundles of black hairs on the back, 
intermixed with larger ones: at each end of the body is 
a pencil of converging hairs, and the sides are spotted 
with bundles of white ones, which with longer tawny 
ones are bent downwards, so as to cover the sides of the 
creature’. Some have the anterior aigrettes disposed 
like the arms of a cross, of which the body of the cater- 
pillar is the stem‘. But not only is there considerable 
variety in the general arrangement of the hairs that clothe 
our little larvee, the hairs themselves differ much in their 
kind and structure, of which I will now, before I pro- 
ceed to consider spines, give you some account. Several 
of them are feathered like the plumes of a bird: this is 
the case with those of Morpho Idomeneus, on each seg- 
ment of the body of which are three blue tubercles, like 
so many little turquois beads, from each of which pro- 
ceeds a long black plume’. Other hairs terminate in a 
club; those of the larva of Acronycta Alni, a specimen 
of which I possess taken in England, are flat and incras- 
sated at the apex, something like the antennz of some 
Sphingide. Mad. Merian has figured the caterpillar of 
2 Pirate XIX. Fic. 6. One of these larve was taken at Melville 
Island. See Parry’s Voyage, Appendix No. x. 37. 
> Sepp. iv. ¢, vili. f.4. Some species have three, others four, and 
others even five of these brushes. N. Dict. d’ Hist. Nat. vi. 255. 
* Ibid. Merian Eruc. xxxiv. upper left-hand figure. 
9 Merian Ins, Surinam. t. |x. 
