NEIGHBOURHOOD OF MANCHESTER. 211 
truding themselves as far as they could consistently 
with security, their exterior covering ultimately gave 
way, and in July the insects made their appearance 
in the imago or perfect state. 
Having procured some of the larve of this moth, 
for the purpose of observing the metamorphoses they 
undergo and identifying their species, I put them 
into clean phials of transparent glass, the perpendi- 
cular sides of which they readily ascended by means 
of lines of their own spinning, after the manner of 
the caterpillar of the Goat Moth*. This circum- 
stance induced me to try the experiment with the 
larvee of other insects. Capturing, indiscriminately, 
such as came in my way, I soon collected a consider- 
able number; and, on introducing them into the 
phials, found that several of them made their way up 
the glass without any apparent difficulty, while others 
were totally incapable of doing so. ‘These ascents, 
in many instances, were effected by spinning lines, 
which were made to answer the purpose of a ladder, 
as noticed above, in some by the assistance of a 
slimy or viscid secretion which left a sensible trace 
on the glass, and in others by a method which I 
cannot satisfactorily explain, the caterpillars, in this 
case, neither spinning lines nor leaving any percepti- 
ble trace behind them. At first I was disposed to 
* Mr. Curtis, in his ‘ British Entomology,’ vol. ii. plate 60, 
has given an excellent figure of this caterpillar, representing it 
in the act of climbing. 
P2 
