CATERPILLARS OF THE OAK. 265 



the citadel, and makes havoc in our houses. When we thus 

 speak of Moths as destructives, we refer, of course, to the con- 

 suming excesses of their caterpillar youth, wherein Butterflies 

 also, before they have cast off their grosser humours, play an 

 auxiliary part; but the main body of crawling invaders, is 

 made up of those which will become, in due season, fliers, not 

 of the day, but of the night or evening. Of all these it is only 

 the domestic destroyers of the wardrobe which are generally, 

 as Moths, accustomed to be looked on with alarm ; because it 

 is with these only, and not often with their fellows of the 

 field, that people are accustomed to identify as one, the con- 

 suming crawler and the harmless flutterer. 



To begin now with the first division of our numerous army: 

 those defoliating marauders with whom forest trees and 

 hedge-rows^ are the chief objects of attack. Among the most 

 formidable invaders of the oak are certain caterpillar broods, 

 whose earliest infant steps are accustomed to be taken over the 

 surface of a leaf, which they traverse in marching order. Of 

 these there are some distinguished regiments, often to be seen 

 late in August, drawn up in regular files ; and in their brilliant 

 uniforms of scarlet, black, and white, as well as in their mar- 

 shalled array, requiring no great effort of imagination to liken 

 them to Lilliputian soldiery. Each of these infant legions, in pre- 

 paratory exercise for operations on a grander scale, strips off its 

 rations from the upper surface of the leaf it traverses, leaving 

 all behind it brown and arid, while all before is fresh and 



