926 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 
tected by other contrivances,) appear with a smooth skin, 
without any of the tubercles, hairs, or spines for which 
they were before remarkable*. Wonderful are the va- 
rieties of this kind which insects exhibit :—but upon these 
I shall treat more at large on a future occasion. I shall 
only here select a few facts more particularly connected 
with my present subject. The caterpillar of the great 
tiger-moth (Bombyx Caja, F.), which is beset with long 
dense hair, when rolled up—an attitude it usually as- 
sumes if alarmed—cannot then be taken without great 
difficulty, slipping repeatedly from the pressure of the 
fingers. If its hairs do not render it distasteful, this 
may often be the mean of its escape from the birds.— 
That little destructive beetle, Anthrenus Museorum, F., 
which so annoys the entomologist, if it gets into his ca- 
binets, when in the larva state, being covered with 
bunches of diverging hairs, glides from between your 
fingers as if it were lubricated with oil. The two tufts 
of hairs near the tail of this are most curious in their 
structure, being jointed through their whole length, and 
terminating ina sharp halberd-shaped point®.—I have 
a small lepidopterous caterpillar from Brazil, the upper 
side of which is thickly beset with strong, sharp, branch- 
ing spines, which would enter into the finger, and would 
probably render it a painful morsel to any minor enemy. 
The powers of annoyance, by means of their hair, with 
which the moth of the fir, and the procession-moth, be- 
@ Reaum. v. 94. 
> This was first pointed out tome by Mr. Briggs of the Post-office, 
who sent me an accurate drawing of the animal and of one ofits hairs. 
I did not at that time discover that it had been figured by De Geer, 
iv. ¢. viii. f. 1-7. 
