350 Insect Architecture. 



always to be found. It is probable that in 1830 the lackeys 

 will be few, for, notwithstanding the myriads of caterpillars 

 last summer, we saw only a single moth of this species, and 

 out of a number of chrysalides which a young friend had in 

 his nurse-boxes, not one moth was bred. 



The small ermine does not, besides, feed so indiscri- 

 minately as many others, but when the bird-cherry (Prunus 

 padus), its peculiar food, is not to be had, it will put up 

 with blackthorn, plum-tree, hawthorn, and almost any sort 

 of orchard fruit-tree. With respect to such caterpillars as 

 feed on different plants, Reaumur and De Geer make the 

 singular remark, that in most cases they would only eat the 

 sort of plant upon which they were originally hatched.* 

 We verified this, in the case of the caterpillar in question, 

 upon two different nests which we took, in 1806, from the 

 bird-cherry at Crawfordland, in Ayrshire. Upon bringing 

 these to Kilmarnock, we could not readily supply them with 

 the leaves of this tree; and having then only a slight 

 acquaintance with the habits of insects, and imagining they 

 would eat any sort of leaf, we tried them with almost every- 

 thing green in the vicinity of the town ; but they refused to 

 touch any which we offered them. After they had fasted 

 several days, we at length procured some fresh branches of 

 the bird-cherry, with which they gorged themselves so that 

 most of them died. Last summer (1829) we again tried a 

 colony of these caterpillars, found on a seedling plum-tree at 

 Lee, in Kent, with blackthorn, hawthorn, and many other 

 leaves, and even with those of the bird-cherry ; but they 

 would touch nothing except the seedling plum, refusing the 

 grafted varieties. (J. R.) 



A circumstance not a little remarkable in so very nice a 

 feeder is, that in some cases the mother moth will deposit 

 her eggs upon trees not of indigenous growth, and not even 

 of the same genus with her usual favourites. Thus, in 

 1825, the cherry-apple, or Siberian crab (Pyrus prunifolia, 

 WILLDENOW), so commonly grown in the suburbs of London, 

 swarmed with them. On a single tree at Islington we 

 * De Geer, Mm. i. 319. 



