STATES OF INSECTS. (Larva.) 179 
attends the spines of this species: in many cases a 
smaller and very slender hair-like spine issues from 
them, resembling a sting; and this accounts for an ob- 
g3 
servation of Abbott’s, that many American caterpillars 
sting like a nettle, raising little white blisters on the 
skin when accidentally or slightly touched*. Lewin has 
described the caterpillar of a moth found in New Hol- 
land, which he names Bombyx vulnerans, that, like these 
Americans, has also the power of wounding, but in a 
different way. It darts out, he says, when alarmed by 
the approach of any thing, from as many knobs or pro- 
tuberances in its back eight bunches of little stings, with 
which it inflicts a very painful and venemous wound?. 
The caterpillar of Papilio Protesilaus, if Madame Me- 
rian’s account and figure of it are correct, has its body 
armed with hairy spines, the extreme point of which is 
surmounted by a star-shaped appendage‘. Those of a 
few saw-flies (Tenthredo Prunz), and another figured by 
Reaumur’, are covered with a little forest of spines, 
without lateral branches but divided into a fork at the 
apex. Some spines are merely rough, with very short 
points, as those round the head, which give so terrific 
an appearance to the caterpillar of that handsome moth 
Ceracampa regalis, of some proceedings of which I gave 
‘you an account in one of my former letters *. 
I must now say something upon the arrangement of 
these spines. Though in a few instances: so thickly set 
2 Smith’s Adbott's Ins. of Georg, Pref. vi. 
> Prodromus Entomology. 
* Ins. Sur. t. xliii. The figure represents only the two spines near 
the head as thus circumstanced. 
4 Reaum. v. ¢. xii. f. 8,14. Prare XVIIU. Fre. 11. 
* See above, Vol. II. p. 235. 
\ “N 2 
