SEPTEMBER. 419 



poplar, balm of gilead, white maple, and horse-chestnut, and 

 occasionally fruit trees, shrubs, and herbage. It comes forth 

 in the spring as soon as the buds begin to expand into leaves, 

 and increases in size and voracity with the growth of the 

 foliage, and, in its progress to maturity, wherever it abounds, 

 it despoils the trees of the greater part of their leaves in the 

 course of a few weeks. It has the power of spinning threads, 

 and by the help of one of these it will drop and hang sus- 

 pended from the branches, when disturbed by the shaking of 

 the tree or from any other cause. Gathering up the thread 

 with its teeth and fore feet, it can remount again at pleasure 

 by this silken clue. People, passing under the trees, are often 

 much annoyed by the worms spinning down upon them, or 

 dropping upon the walks when the threads are broken. 

 Towards the end of June, the insect finishes its career in the 

 worm state. It then encloses itself, among the half-eaten 

 leaves at the end of a branch, in a kind of cocoon, consisting 

 of a silken network of large and irregular meshes. Within 

 this loose web it casts its skin, and takes the chrysalis form. 

 It remains in this state only about a week, when the insect 

 emerges from its cocoon, transformed to a winged miller or 

 moth of a white color. Both sexes are equally well provided 

 with wings. The females deposit their eggs upon the 

 branches and trunks of the trees, the bark of which is some- 

 times thickly sprinkled with these eggs. The millers were 

 seen this year, fluttering in the evening about the trees, or 

 pairing upon the branches, as early as the third of July ; and 

 most of them had finished laying their eggs before the mid- 

 dle of the same month. As only one brood has been observed 

 during the summer, the eggs must remain unhatched, from 

 the time when they are laid, through the rest of the summer, 

 and the whole of the autumn and winter. 



The measure-worm belongs to the order of Lepidopterous 

 insects, and to that great division of the PhalcencB, or moths, 

 which Linnseus called Geomeira. Insects of this kind, in 

 the worm or caterpillar state, have legs at their two extremi- 

 ties only, and none beneath the middle of the body. Hence, 

 in creeping, they are obliged to arch upwards the middle of 



