352 LEPIDOPTERA. 



in their progress. Corn-fields, gardens, and even the rank 

 weeds by the way-side, afford them temporary nourishment 

 while wandering in search of a place of security from the 

 tide and weather. They conceal themselves in walls, under 

 stones, in hay-stacks and mows, in wood-piles, and in any 

 other places in their way, which will afford them the proper 

 degree of shelter during the winter. Here they make their 

 coarse hairy cocoons, and change to chrysalids, in which form 

 they remain till the following summer, and are transformed 

 to moths in the month of June. 



In those cases where, from any cause, the caterpillars, 

 when arrived at maturity, have been unable to leave the 

 marshes, they conceal themselves beneath the stubble, and 

 there make their cocoons. Such, for the most part, is the 

 course and duration of the lives of these insects in Massa- 

 chusetts ; but in the IMiddle and Southern States two broods 

 are brought to perfection annually, and even here some of 

 them run through their course sooner, and produce a second 

 brood of caterpillars in the same season ; for I have obtained 

 the moths between the 15th and 20th of May, and again be- 

 tween the 1st and the 10th of August. Those which were 

 disclosed in May passed the winter in the chrysalis form, 

 while the moths which appeared in August must have been 

 produced from caterpillars that had come to their growth and 

 gone through all their transformations during the same sum- 

 mer. This, however, in Massachusetts, is not a common 

 occurrence ; for by far the greater part of these insects 

 appear at one time, and require a year to complete their 

 several changes. 



The full-grown caterpillar measures one inch and three 

 quarters or more in length. It is clothed with long hairs, 

 which are sometimes black and sometimes brown on the back 

 and fore part of the body, and of a lighter brown color on 

 the sides. The hairs, like those of the other Arctians, grow 

 in spreading clusters from warts, which are of a yellowish 

 color in this species. The body, when stripped of the hairs, 



