CERATOMIA AMYNTOR 



GENUS, CERATO'MiA (" horned shoulders "). 



SPECIES, AMYNTOR (named for the king of the Dolopians). 



When we were little girls and had not outgrown our 

 nurse's horror of creeping things, we used to be much 

 disturbed by "great, big, horny caterpillars" which 

 came down from the elms between which our swing 

 hung, and crawled about very fast, sometimes in num- 

 bers which drove us away from the swing for a day or 

 two in August or September. Now we think of each of 

 those fine crawlers as a lost chance, and do not thank 

 our nurse for the silly fear she gave us. 



Such caterpillars are the " elm-tree sphinx," and we 

 have never found them on any other tree, though they 

 are said to feed on linden and white birch as well. 

 They feed high up on the tree, and the usual way of 

 obtaining them is to catch them when they come 

 down to go into the ground, though One of Us once 

 found five on an elm sapling. We had had many full- 

 grown larvae of this kind, but our first set of eggs has 

 a story. An English entomologist wrote to ask if we 

 could send him eggs of amfjntor, and a few days later, 

 in July, One of Us was walking along a street in a 

 town — not the country — when she saw on a stone 

 slab at some distance a triangular projection which 



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