224 



NATURE STUDY AND LIFE 



damaged. The parent is a small black sawfly with smoky 

 wings. Numbers may be caught about the rose bushes on 

 sunny mornings in May or early June. When full-grown 

 the larvae burrow into the ground and there pass the winter. 

 Several authorities — Harris, Comstock, Cragin — state 

 that there are two broods of rose slugs a year. Miss Murt- 

 feldt's experiments, with which the writer's observations 

 agree, prove that there is but a single brood. 



The Pear-Tree Slug, Eriocampa cerasi, is the larva of a 

 sawfly about the size of the above, shining black with 



iridescent wings, the front 

 pair smoky in the center. 

 It feeds, like the rose slug, 

 on pear or cherry leaves and 

 winters in the ground. 



The Red-Humped Apple-Tree 

 Caterpillar, Qidemasia con- 

 cinna. — This species and 

 the yellow-necked apple-tree 

 caterpillar, Datana ministra, 

 are apt to attract attention 

 in the late summer or early 

 fall. Their caterpillars are 

 striped yellow and white on 

 a dark ground, the one with 

 the head and fourth segment coral red, the other with the 

 head shining black and first segment orange. They feed 

 and rest in close ranks and strip the branches perfectly 

 clean as they descend. When disturbed they secrete an 

 acrid-smelling fluid, which evidently protects them from 

 birds. They are the larvae of moths which spend the 



Fig. 95 



Red-Humped .'\pple-Tree 

 Caterpillars 

 «, larvEe parasitized by iclineunions 



