APPENDIX. 149 



of seeing very plainly) and proceeded to search for another con- 

 venient place for her purpose. The caterpillar has twenty feet 

 (six of its legs being of considerable length, the other fourteen 

 very short), and in its first stage is of a jetty black, smooth, as 

 to privation of hair, but covered with innumerable wrinkles. 

 Having acquired its full size, it fixes its hinder parts firmly to 

 the leaf of a turnip, or any other substance, and breaking its 

 outer coat or slough near the head, crawls out, leaving the skin 

 fixed to the leaf, &c. The under coat, which it now appears in, 

 is of a bluish or lead-colour, and the caterpillar is evidently di- 

 minished in its size. In every respect it is the same animal as 

 before, and continues to feed on the turnips for some days lon- 

 ger: it then entirely leaves off eating, and becomes covered 

 with a dewy moisture, which seems to exude from it in great 

 abundance, and appearing to be of a glutinous nature, retains 

 any loose or pliant substance which happens to come in contact 

 with it, and by this means alone seems to form its chrysalis 

 coat. One I find laid up in the fold of a withered turnip-leaf 

 (that which I have the honour of enclosing you) was, among six 

 others, formed by putting common garden mould to them while 

 they were in the exudatory state above described. 



Vrorn the generic characters of the fly I conclude it to be a 

 Tenthredo of Hill ; but whether that voluminous author be suf- 

 ficiently accurate, or whether, from being an almost entire 

 stranger to Natural History, I may or may not sufficiently un- 

 derstand my book, I must beg leave to submit to your superior 

 knowledge of the subject. 



