180 STATES OF INSECTS. 



when accidentally or slightly touched a . Lewin has de- 

 scribed the caterpillar of a moth found in New Holland, 

 which he names Bombyx vnlnerans, that, like these Ame- 

 ricans, has also the power of wounding, but in a different 

 way. It darts out, he says, when alarmed by the ap- 

 proach of any thing, from as many knobs or protube- 

 rances in its back eight bunches of little stings, with 

 which it inflicts a very painful and venomous wound b . 

 The caterpillar of Papilio Protesilans F., if Madame Me- 

 rian's account and figure of it are correct, has its body 

 armed with hairy spines, the extreme point' of which is 

 surmounted by a star-shaped appendage c . Those of a 

 few saw-flies ( Tenthredo Pruni L.), and another figured 

 by Reaumur d , are covered with a little forest of spines 

 without lateral branches, but divided into a fork at the 

 apex. Some spines are merely rough, with very short 

 points, as those round the head, which give so terrific an 

 appearance to the caterpillar of the Bombyx regalis> of 

 some proceedings of which I gave you an account in one 

 of my former letters e . 



I must now say something upon the arrangement of 

 these spines. Though in a few instances so thickly set 

 as entirely to conceal the body of the animal, as in the 

 case of the Brazil one lately mentioned, yet generally 

 speaking, even when they are most numerous, they per- 

 mit the skin to be distinctly seen. Their arrangement 

 is various, though always orderly : in the majority they 



a Smith's Abbotts Ins. of Georg. Pref. vi. 



b Prodromus Entomology. 



c Ins. Sur. t. xliii. The figure represents only the two spines near 

 the head as thus circumstanced. 



d Reaum. v. i. xii./. 8, 14. Plate XVIII. Fig. 11. 



e See above, Vol. II. p. 238. This, with B. imperatoria, &c. in the 

 modern system, should form a genus. 



