100 NATURAL HISTORY 



fly-state. I suspect they lay their eggs in the bud of the fir, which 

 remain through the winter and hatch in the spring, when the hud is 

 going to shoot forth. The little animals feed on the inside of the cell, 

 which increases the cavity ; and as those cavities are increasing, the 

 substance of the cells is also increasing. There is a whitish matter like 

 dust that lines the cell everywhere : whether this is excrement or not 

 I cannot say. While in this state I do not believe they change their 

 caterpillar coats. They have but one state before they get tbeir wings ; 

 therefore they have but one change, and thus differ from the common 

 flying insect. 



The wingless state cannot be called a grub, maggot, or caterpillar ; it 

 has more the figure of those of the apterous ? kind, having six feet of 

 considerable length, two antennas, with the projecting abdomen some- 

 thing bike a louse, only a little rounder, and a shorter abdomen. It is 

 of a light brown colour. "When the fir-shoot has done growing and 

 the buds are formed, then the little animals are ready to make their 

 escape ; each cell opens like the openings of the cone of the pine, and 

 forth the animals come. "When it comes out it crawls on to one of the 

 leaves of the pine, and there it rests, and throws off its coat, or rather 

 slips out of it, and leaves it on the leaf, with the skins of the feet as it 

 were grasping the leaf. The little animal now begins to have the wings 

 shooting forth. They appear like two little green knobs on the lateral 

 and posterior part of the thorax. They soon come to their full size. 

 The wings are green, but the body is of a darker colour than what it 

 was before. 



It is to be supposed that they now copulate and lay their eggs. 

 Each of the parts of the fir-bud is a kind of capsule for the leaf, so that 

 by having the eggs laid in it, either the egg or the young insect can be 

 conducted to that which is to form the stem ; and there it stimulates 

 the stem to form itself in such way as to make a regular cell at the root 

 of each leaf, while the leaf itself is prevented from growing, which 

 makes this part of the shoot appear like a cone of the pine, and the young 

 insect or eggs appear like the seed of the cone. The structure, ap- 

 pearance, and the different processes that go on in the part, would at 

 first seem to be the natural process of the plant, not depending on a 

 foreign stimulus ; for, in the month of May, when the shoot is swelling 

 and beginning to elongate, we find that it begins to swell as if inflamed ; 

 but when sliced down I could not observe the eggs. 



Of the White Eveniny Moth. [The 'Brown-tail,' Porthisia chrysor- 

 rhoea, or the 'Gold-tail ' Porthisia auriflua.~\ 



The white evening moth, the female of which has a [tuft of] brown 



