130 



Forty-fifth Report on the State Museum. 



FigI.— The raspberr y geometer, Synchlora glauc aria: unbend and 

 a, the caterpillar; b, one of its segments enlarged 



The caterpillar and the moth that it produces are represented in the 

 accompanying figure, but the reader, if not an entomologist may need 



to be told that the former is 

 intended to be shown in the 

 little irregular bunch adher- 

 ing to the berry at a, and 

 looking as if it were merely a 

 roll of vegetable material 

 that had been carried about 

 in the winds before finding a 

 temporary resting-p lace. 

 Only upon examining care- 

 fully could the outline of a 

 larval form be made out 

 within it, nor would it then be 

 accepted as a living being, 

 unless it could be seen to 

 commence to 

 p eniZged. travel over the berry or to 



(After Riley.") feed upon it. 



The raspberry geometer, as it is popularly called, is a small 

 "measuring-worm," "inch-worm," or " looper " — names that are 

 borrowed from the peculiar mode of progression in the family of 

 Geometridw to which it belongs, the caterpillars of which travel in a 

 series of loops, as if surveying or measuring land. Supported on the 

 terminal legs and extending the body to the utmost, they grasp the 

 twig or leaf, and bring forward the hinder legs in contact with the 

 front, The intermediate portions of the body which are unprovided 

 with the legs that are present in most other families, are curved upward 

 by the movement in the form of the capital letter omega in the Greek 



alphabet. 



Concealment or Mimicry. 



While many of the geometers when at rest extend their body 

 upward from the branch in a straight line, counterfeiting almost 

 exactly a twig, this one rests upon the berry in a close loop. When 

 motionless in this position, no one would suspect it of being a living 

 animal form. Its concealment is made almost perfect by the bits of 

 vegetable material within which it hides itself. From it* body a 

 number of spines project, as shown in one of its enlarged segments at 

 h in the figure. To these and at other points, it fastens the anthers of 

 the raspberry blossoms and other bits of vegetation so thickly as to 

 almost conceal its true form. It is strange that the anthers should be 



