THE ISABELLA TIGER-MOTH. 355 



numbers of caterpillars and grasshoppers will be left to grow 

 to maturity and disperse upon the uplands, by which means 

 the evil will go on increasing from year to year ; or they will 

 be brought in with the hay to perish in our barns and stacks, 

 where their dead bodies will prove offensive to the cattle, and 

 occasion a waste of fodder. To get rid of " the old fog " or 

 stubble, which becomes much thicker and longer in conse- 

 quence of early mowing, the marshes should be burnt over in 

 March. The roots of the grass wiU not be injured by burn- 

 ing the stubble, on the contrary they will be fertilized by the 

 ashes ; while great numbers of young grasshoppers, cocoons 

 of caterpillars, and various kinds of destructive insects, with 

 their eggs, concealed in the stubble, will be destroyed by the 

 fire. In the Province of New Brunswick, the benefit arising 

 from burning the stubble has long been proved ; and this 

 practice is getting into favor here. 



During the autumn there may be seen in our gardens and 

 fields, and even by the way-side, a kind of caterpillar (Fig. 

 170) whose peculiar appearance 

 must fi-equently have excited at- ^ , 



tention. It is very thickly clothed 

 with hairs, which are stiff, short, 

 and perfectly even at the ends, like 

 the bristles of a brush, as if they 

 had all been shorn off with the shears to the same length. 

 The hairs on the first four and last two rings are black ; and 

 those on the six intermediate rings of the body are tan-red. 

 The head and body of the caterpillar are also black. When 

 one of these insects is taken up, it immediately rolls itself into 

 a ball, like a hedge-hog, and, owing to its form and to the elas- 

 ticity of the diverging hairs with which it is covered, it read- 

 ily slides from the fingers and hand of its captor. It eats 

 the leaves of the clover, dandelion, narrow-leaved plantain, 

 and of various other herbaceous plants, and on the approach 

 of winter creeps under stones, rails, or boards on the ground, 

 where it remains in a half-torpid state till spring. In April 



