The Moths and Butterflies 



395 



seem to carry very far expedients of Nature for protection by deceit. Other 

 common members of the family are the several species of Schizura, moths 

 strongly resembling owlet-moths (Noctuidae) with their brown and gray 

 and gray and blackish finely variegated lore wings and unmarked silky white 

 wings. Their brown or greenish larvae, which feed on fruit-trees, forest 

 trees, small fruits, and other shrubby plants, are distinguished by having 

 a prominent horn or spined tubercle on the fourth body-ring behind the 

 head. They are said to eat out a notch about the size of the body, in the edge 

 of a leaf, fitting themselves along this notch, so that the prominent tubercle 

 and other irregularities of the body seem to simulate the rounded edge of 

 the leaf; they are thus well concealed. The moths, too, are much given 

 to dissimulation. Each moth rests on the trunk or branches of the tree, 



FIG. 565. Canker worms, larvae of a geometric! moth. (After Slingerland; natural size.) 



head downward, with wings closely folded around the body and legs all 

 drawn together, the dull-gray tone of the wings with their bits of lichen- 

 green and whitish color giving the whole a marvelous resemblance to a bit 

 of rough weathered bark. 



Familiar to all observers, although certainly not very often seen and 

 rarely found in large numbers, are the inchworms, spanworms, or loopers 



