WO THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 
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coils itself up there into a sort of ball and sieeps through the long and 
dreary winter, and about the time when the birds come back and the warm 
days of spring begin, this bristly creature rouses itself to begin life anew. 
Hence it is one of the few caterpillars which present themselves to us full 
grown in early spring, and from its peculiar appearance can scarcely fail 
to attract attention. It has not to wander far for food, for, being in 
possession of an omnivorous appetite, it feasts on the first green thing it 
meets with, grass, or weed, or early plant, and having fed but a short 
time, it spins its cocoon and becomes a chrysalis. 
The caterpillar is about an inch and a quarter long; its head and body 
are black, and it is thickly covered with tufts of short, stiff, bristly hairs, 
which are dull red along the middle of the body and black at each end. 
When handled it immediately coils itself into a ball and remains for some 
time motionless. It is very tenacious of life; we have known the larva 
to be frozen in a sclid jump of ice, and when thawed out move around as 
nothing had happened. It sometimes occurs, although very rarely, that 
is larva becomes a chrysalis early in the fall, and produces the moth the 
Me Ue same season. We have never 
met with an instancc of this but 
once, see CAN. ENT., vol. i, p. 
26; its usual course is that which 
has aiready been partially de- 
scribed. 
Its cocoon, 4, fig. 14, is spun 
in some oe nook, and is of 
a dark color, of an elongated 
oval form and curiously wrought 
with a network of silk, in the 
meshes of which are interwoven 
the black and red hairs from the. 
body of the caterpillar. Within 
this enclosure the insect changes 
to a dark brown chrysalis, and remains as such about two or three weeks, 
sometimes longer, whieh the moth having burst its shelly covering, softens 
the silky fibres of which its cocoon is formed by a liquid with which it is 
furnished, and makes its exit through a hole at one end of the cocoon. 
The moth, a, fig. 14, when its wings are spread, measures about two 
inches. Its wings are of a pale yellowish buff colour, with a few dull 
