430 
INSECTS. 
[Chap. XII. 
Attention being thus directed to the quarter whence 
an assailant has lowered himself down, the caterpillars 
above will be found in clusters, sometimes amounting to 
hundreds, clinging to the branches and the bark, with a 
few straggling over the leaves or suspended from them 
by lines. These pests are so annoying to children as 
well as destructive to the foliage, that it is often neces- 
sary to singe them off the trees by a flambeau fixed on 
the extremity of a pole ; and as they fall to the ground 
they are eagerly devoured by the crows and domestic 
fowls. 1 
The Wood-carrying Moth. — There is another family 
of insects, the singular habits of which will not fail to 
attract the traveller in the cultivated tracts of Ceylon 
— these are moths of the genus Oiketicus 2 , of which 
the females are devoid of wings, and some possess no 
articulated feet. Their larvae construct for themselves 
cases, which they suspend to a branch frequently of the 
pomegranate 3 , surrounding them with the stems of 
leaves, and thorns or pieces of twigs bound together by 
threads, till the whole presents the appearance of a 
bundle of rods about an inch and a half long; and, 
from the resemblance of this to a Eoman fasces, one 
1 Another caterpillar which feeds traversed by a broad green band, 
on the jasmine flowering Carissa, It is common in the western side of 
stings with such fury that I have Ceylon. The larvse of the genus 
known a gentleman to shed tears Adolia are also hairy, and sting 
while the pain was at its height, with virulence. 
It is short and broad, of a pale 2 Eumeta, "WTk. 
green, with fleshy spines on the 3 The singular instincts of a 
upper surface, each of which seems species of Thecla, Dipsas Isocrates, 
to be charged with the venom that Fab., in connection with the fruit 
occasions this acute suffering. The of the pomegranate, were fully de- 
moth which this caterpillar pro- scribed by Mr. Westwood, in a 
duces, Necera lepida, Cramer; paper read before the Entomo- 
IA?nacodes graciosa, Westw., has logical Society of London in 1835. 
dark brown wings, the primary 
