pillars oF a small brown moth have for several years 

 done much injury to the balsam Firs, and the hosts 

 dF warblers ami other insectivorous birds seem unable 

 to cheek the little pest. 



A most curious insect lives as a small brown cater- 

 pillar on the twin's <>F jacUpines. This little worm 

 builds for itself the queerest house I have yet found 

 amongst all the strange dwellings in nature. It is 

 built of small pieces of rosin or pitch ; and it looks 

 like a long wart or lumps of brownish pitch, such as 

 every woodman has seen hardened on the trunks of 

 evergreens. The insect must build the shelter around 

 itself, for I have never found an opening in the rosin 

 shell. 



As Far as I have observed, either no bird has caught 

 on to the trick of this house, or birds do not like to 

 bn-aU into pitch houses; at all events, I have never 

 Found one of the houses broken open. And now I 

 com" to a point difficult to explain. The little worm 

 repaired any damages I did to its house, and promptly 

 dosed any opening I had made. 



At First it crisscrossed the breech with a fine thread, 

 which it spun from its mouth. Then it took little bits 

 of rosin and stuck them on the web. I watched one 

 of them patch a large opening. In about two hours, 

 the gauxe was spun and covered with a thin layer 

 of pitch; and when I returned the following day, the 

 wall had been much thickened. Any one who finds 

 these pitch warts on the jackpine can easily verify 

 my story. In some years they are common; at other 

 times not a single one can be found. The parent of 

 the caterpillar is most likely a small moth, but I 



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