STO LEPIDOPTERA. 



often thev are very short and small. The tongue, for the 

 most part, is invisible. Their wings coyer the back like a 

 steep roof; the under pair, being wider than common, are 

 not entirely covered by the upper wings, but project beyond 

 them at the sides of the body when closed. Their cater- 

 pillars live on trees and shrubs, and some kinds herd together 

 in considerable numbers or swarms : they make their cocoons 

 mostly or entirely of silk. The winged insect is assisted 

 in its attempts to come forth, after its last change, by a 

 reddish-colored liquid, which softens the end of its cocoon, 

 and which, as some say, is discharged from its own mouth, 

 or, as others with greater probability assert, escapes from 

 the inside of the chrysalis the moment that the included 

 moth bursts the shell. 



To this group belong the caterpillars that swarm in the 

 unpruned nurseries and neglected orchards of the slovenly 

 and improvident husbandman, and hang their many-coated 

 webs upon the wild cherry-trees that are suffered to spring 

 up unchecked by the wayside and encroach upon the borders 

 of our pastures and fields. The eggs, from which they are 

 hatched, are placed around the ends of the branches, forming 

 a wide kind of rino- or bracelet, consisting of three or four 

 hundred eggs, in the form of short cylinders standing on 

 their ends close together, and covered with a thick coat of 

 brownish water-proof varnish (Plate VII. Fig. 16).* The 

 caterpillars come forth with the unfolding of the leaves of 

 the apple and cherry tree, during the latter part of April 

 or the beginning of May. The first signs of their activity 

 appear in the formation of a little angular web or tent, some- 

 what resembling a spider's web, stretched between the forks 

 of the branches a little below the cluster of eggs. Under the 

 shelter of these tents, in making which they all work togeth- 

 er, the caterpillars remain concealed at all times when not 

 engaged in eating. In crawling from twig to twig and from 



* A good figure of a cluster of these eggs may be seen in the Boston Cultiva- 

 tor, Vol. X. No. 10, for March 4, 1848. 



