7564 Insects. 



of llie hazel, aud lays a single egg on the upper surface of a leaf; she then 6ulters off 

 to another, then to another, never tiring, never hesitating which leaf to choose, hut 

 always directed by an unfailing instinct to the honeysuckle, and always avoiding those 

 leiivcs on which an egg has already been deposited. The egg is something the shape 

 of an orange, only flatter at the poles, and has been compared to those sea-urchins or 

 sea-hedgehogs which are found on the sea-beach, and are to he seen in the window of 

 every shell shop. In fourteen days the little larva comes out of the egg-shell, and 

 toddles to the very tip of the leaf before it begins eating, and then it nibbles away 

 day after day, eating the green part, and leaving only the midrib sticking out like a 

 hristle, and always after a good meal of leaf it goes to the very point of this bristle, 

 and there rests while its meal digests and while it acquires strength for future attacks 

 on the same leaf. Day after day the alternate processes of eating the leaf and resting 

 on the lip of the bristle-like midrib continue, until three quarters or rather more of the 

 leaf has been eaten, and then it knows that its devouring duties for the year are over. 

 We all know that the leaves of the honeysuckle are deciduous, and, in the course of 

 Nature, would fall off before winter ; this, however, would not suit the requirings of 

 the juvenile larva, which, having once fallen to the gmund with the fallen leaf, would 

 inevitably perish. To prevent this falling is absolutely necessary to the existence of 

 the larva, and therefore to the preservation of the species ; how then is this to be 

 accomplished ? The larva, by spinning a number of silken threads wound round and 

 round the twig, and round and round the leaf-stalk, fastens the leaf-stalk to the twig 

 to which it is still attached. The next process is to make a winter habitation of that 

 portion of leaf that still remains uneattn ; the corners of this uneaten portion are 

 fastened tightly together, and then the edges are united, tliese operations being effected 

 by means of silk spun from the mouth ; the work is then finished, and the little 

 Ciiterjiillar is thus laid up for winter quarters inside his bainmock, the bristle-like midrib 

 of the leaf curling over it like a tail. Now the process of fastening the leaf to the twig 

 by silken cables has done nothing to prevent the natural dehiscence of the leaf-stalk 

 at its base, so that this inevitable process takes place at the appointed time, and 

 then the little cot, instead of standing erect, falls as far as the cables will permit, 

 always less than half an inch, and rocks to and fro all the winter, lulling the infant 

 larva lo sleep, and keeping him asleep for six consecutive months ; rain, snow, ice, 

 wind, and all the vicissitudes of our winter, have no power to injure or even wake him ; 

 hung aloft in his little cradle he rocks in comfort and security, and rides out the 

 roughest storm without a thought of harm. In April he wakes up, the same increase 

 of temperature which poets tell us rouses "the torpid sap detruded to the roots," — a 

 very apocryphal doctrine by the way, as the change of temperature is more likely to 

 be felt in the air than in the earth : however, the same change of temperature which 

 compels the leaf-buds to burst, also resuscitates the little caterpillar ; he wakes up, 

 crawls out of his hammock, and commences operations on the expanding leaves. He 

 now no longer confines himself to the tip of the leaf, but feeds away, with all the vora- 

 city which a winter's fast may be supposed to have engendered, during nearly the 

 whole of April and May ; and by the 1st of June is full fed, and then differs in toto 

 from the imaginary larva of Limenitis Sibylla figured by Curtis, aud described by our 

 English authorities: he is of a pale green colour, with red-brown head, legs and 

 spines, and a pure white streak on each side just above the claspers ; this streak begins 

 on the 6di segment and extends to the last pair of claspers ; the head itself is beset 

 with short sharp spines ; there are two long and branched spines on the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 



