348 CATERPILLARS SWIFT AND SLOW. 



speak, indeed, of all caterpillars as " crawlers;" but while some 

 " drag their slow length along," tardy as the tortoise, or that 



" Enfant la terre errant sur le gazon, 

 Prive d'os et de sang, et portant sa maison," 



others run with the rapidity of " the Hare," an appellative 

 really bestowed for its swiftness, on a foreign species. There 

 are not wanting English runners of the same description. We 

 may notice, amongst them, as a very common specimen, a 

 caterpillar (that, we believe, of the Large Ermine Moth) with 

 a skin blackish or greenish, striated in its length by a broad 

 white line on either side, and thickly covered by a coat of long 

 brown fur, made up of tufts proceeding from studs or tubercles. 1 

 This, one of the pillagers of promiscuous cates of an herbaceous 

 description, may frequently be seen by roadside or in garden, 

 and usually in company of several messmates, employing his 

 jaws with prodigious celerity on the leaves of dock, plantain, 

 dandelion, marigold, or violet. If we rudely interrupt him in 

 his harmless feasting, he rolls up instanter, and falls from his 

 station a defensive feint of death or inactivity, from which, 

 presently, he betakes himself to flight, and runs, or more pro- 

 perly glides, away with a degree of celerity which leaves no 

 doubt of the excellent use he can make, on occasion, of his 

 eight pair of heels. 



As one of the foremost hindmost, rather of the creeping 

 caterpillars, has been noticed that of the Hawk-moth, Filipen- 

 dula, and the majority of its Sphinx-like brethren, 1 are slow 

 footed as well as averse to movement. 



Flies, wasps, and ichneumons, may be all considered run- 

 ners ; but, in accordance with that system of compensation so 

 generally carried out amongst created things, it is chiefly 

 amongst insects that are destitute of wings (those comprised 

 in the Linnaean order Aptera) that we meet with such as are 

 most agile and dexterous in the use of their legs, which vary in 

 number from eight to above a hundred. 

 1 See Vignette. 



