THE FALL WEB-WORM AND THE SWALLOWTAILS 



367 



of the Web-worm." A full account of its reproduction 

 and modes of attack is given. Two other insect enemies 

 are also illustrated and fully described these are an 

 Apanteles and a Tachina-fly. 



These latter destroyed thousands of the Web-moth 

 caterpillars during the plague of 1886, when the city of 

 Wash ington 

 and parts of its 

 environs was 

 overrun by 

 them. "As long 

 as the cater- 

 pillars were 

 young and still 

 small, the dif- 

 ferent c o m - 

 munities re- 

 mained under 

 cover of their 

 webs, and only 

 offended the 

 eye. But as 

 soon as they 

 reached m a - 

 turity and com- 

 menced to scat- 

 ter, prompted 

 by a desire to 

 find suitable 

 places to spin 

 their cocoons 

 and transform 

 to pupae, mat- 

 t e r s became 

 more unpleas- 

 ant, and com- 

 plaints were 

 heard from all 

 those who had 

 to pass such 

 infested trees. 

 In many locali- 

 ties no one 

 could walk 

 without step- 

 ping upon cat- 

 erpillars ; they 

 dropped upon 

 everyone and 

 e ve ry t hing; 

 they entered 

 flower and 

 vegetable gar- 

 dens, porches and verandas, and the house itself, and be- 

 came, in fact, a general nuisance." It is said that along the 

 tracks of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad, the cotton- 

 woods and white poplars were entirely stripped of their 

 leaves for a distance of five miles out from the Capitol. 



As stated, all the eggs laid by the moths reared by the 

 writer were of a green color a very light green. Each 



TWO VIEWS, NATURAL SIZE, OF THE GIANT SWALLOWTAIL 



Fig. i. This black and yellow butterfly (Papilw 



fauna; it is very abundant in the orange orchards 



it is claimed that its caterpillar feeds on the leaves of those trees. The upper view as seen from 



above, and the lower view as seen from below. 



female deposited from four to five hundred of them, 

 and in nature these are found either on the upper or 

 under sides of a leaf selected to receive them. Riley's 

 observations, however, led him to state that "the egg is 

 of a bright golden yellow, quite globular, and ornamented 

 by numerous regular pits, which give it, under a magnify- 

 ing lens, the 

 appearance of 

 a beaut i f ul 

 golden thimble. 

 As the eggs 

 approach the 

 time of hatch- 

 ing, this color 

 disappears, and 

 gives place to 

 a dull, leaden 

 hue." The 

 writer also ex- 

 amined a large 

 number of the 

 eggs of this 

 moth with a 

 high-power 

 microscope, and 

 they looked like 

 big, green, pit- 

 ted billiard 

 balls, placed in 

 contact with 

 each other, as 

 far as physical 

 tangency could 

 be carried out, 

 through the en- 

 tire mass. Like 

 all such struc- 

 tures, they are 

 extremely 

 beautiful ob- 

 jects when thus 

 examined. 



Very few 

 people see any 

 beauty in a 

 caterpillar the 

 larval stage of 

 some elegant 

 moth or other 

 which every 

 one admires. 

 However, 



cresphontes, Cramer), is one of the largest in our 

 of Florida, where it is known as the "orange dog;' 



many caterpil- 

 lars are extremely beautiful, not so much with respect to 

 their forms as the wonderful coloration of some of the 

 species. As to the harm they do to the leaves of many 

 trees it is but the nature of the creatures, and man is 

 the only animal on earth that complains of their ravages. 

 To read the accounts on the subject of our popular 

 entomologists, one would think that all those species of 



