252 CATERPILLARS AND THEIR MOTHS 



eggs on a sweet-pea leaf. We have never been able 

 to make a cecropia caterpillar eat sweet-pea leaves. 

 Those from the eggs laid on such a leaf would not 

 touch it, but crawled away as if it were disagreeable 

 to them. 



The eggs were ovoid, pinkish white, with a red-brown 

 splash on the upper side, from the gummy fluid which 

 fastened them to the leaf. They were like large pro- 

 methea eggs, but a lens showed them pitted in wavy 

 lines, though not deeply so. 



A brood reared several years later had an egg-period 

 of fifteen days, and the egg-layer laid three hundred 

 and fifty-one eggs in six nights. 



All the cecropia eggs we have found have been laid 

 on the upper side of the leaf in short rows. In the 

 house they are sometimes in mats and piles. The eggs 

 grew lead-colored before hatching. 



The caterpillars were fully a quarter of an inch long, 

 all black except the props and tubercles, which were 

 horn-colored at first. They became black later, how- 

 ever. On each segment were six yellow tubercles, 

 each having seven setae from the top, except on the 

 eleventh segment, which had five, one on the dorsal 

 line. The young larvae crawlxid away from the empty 

 egg-shells without eating them, and did not eat any- 

 thing for twenty-four hours. 



On the fourth day they molted, coming out twice as 

 long as when hatched, but not changed otherwise. 



On the ninth day they molted again, and had the 

 dorsum dull yellow, while on the second, third, and 

 fourth segments the tubercles on each side of the 

 dorsal line were much larger than the others, as 



