LITTLE ERMINE MOTH. 89 



these eggs are hatched, the little caterpillars which 

 come out of them, feed for a few days on the pulpy, inter- 

 nal part of the leaves, but soon set about spinning for 

 themselves a nice, silken, spacious house, taking care to 

 enclose two or three leaves ; as soon as these leaves are 

 devoured, for which purpose they are enclosed, the house 

 is enlarged, and made to include other leaves ; these, in 

 tuna, are devoured, and others enclosed, till a mass of web 

 is formed as big as one's head. These masses are often 

 so abundant as to touch one another, and the whole hedge 

 looks as though it were dead, not a leaf or a fragment of a 

 leaf being visible. The caterpillar is a little, blue-black 

 fellow, with a row of jet-black spots down each side ; and 

 when you hunt him out of his web, he wriggles away back- 

 wards and drops, spinning a thread as he falls, and sus- 

 pended by this thread, he hangs with all the ease of a 

 spider ; swinging backwards and forwards with the wind 

 as unconcerned as if still under cover of his silken domicile : 

 but there is this difference between the caterpillar and the 

 spider ; the caterpillar spins his thread from his mouth, 

 the spider from his tail. When full fed, the caterpillars 

 fasten themselves by their hind legs to a part of their web, 

 and, hanging with the head downwards, turn into chrysa- 

 lises. I have often found dozens hanging together in a 

 line, like rabbits on a pole. At the end of June the moth 

 appears ; it is a pretty little creature, having wings of a 

 leaden ground-colour, with jet-black spots, but varies, 

 some specimens having a pure white ground. Last year, 

 our hedges about Famcomb were swarming with them : 

 and on gates, under the coping of stone walls, and all such 

 places, you might have found the chrysalises hanging by 

 thousands. 



