318 GLEANINGS FROM NATURE. 



The majority of those insects which in May or 

 June will be found feeding on the buds or leaves of 

 our trees, or crawling worm-like over 

 Eggs of Insects th f lawns, or burrow- 



in Winter. . , , ,, ' 



ing beneath the roots of our garden 



plants, are represented in the winter by the eggs 

 alone. These eggs are deposited in autumn by the 

 mother insect, on or near the object destined to fur- 

 nish the young, or larvae, their food. Each egg cor- 

 responds to a seed of one of our annual plants ; being, 

 like it, but a form of life so fashioned and fitted as to 

 withstand for a long period intense cold ; the mother 

 insect, like the summer form of the plant, succumb- 

 ing to the first severe frost. 



Thus myriads of the eggs of grasshoppers are 

 in the early autumn deposited in the ground, in 

 compact masses of forty to sixty each. About mid- 

 April they begin to hatch, and the sprightly 

 little insects, devoid of wings, but otherwise like 

 their parents, begin their life-work of changing grass 

 into flesh. 



A comparatively small number of insects pass the 



winter in the larval or active stage of the young. Of 



these, perhaps the best known is the brown " woolly 



worm " or ' hedgehog caterpillar," as 



Larvae of Insects it ig fv imiliarlv called . It is thickly 



in Winter. .,, ..,** , , , . 



covered with stiff black hairs on each 



end, and with reddish hairs on the middle of the 

 body. These hairs appear to be evenly and closely 

 shorn, so as to give the "animal a velvety look ; and as 

 they have a certain degree of elasticity, and the cater- 

 pillar curls up at the slightest touch, it generally man- 



