THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



11 



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 I 



Fig. 3. — Bombyx Rubi. 



BOMBYX RUBI : 

 THE FOX MOTH. 



There are few Entomologists who do not 

 meet with the larva of this insect in their 

 first season. When young, it is black, 

 with yellow rings, resembling then the 

 equally well known larva of Ecuhelia, 

 Jacobcea, except that the latter is yellow 

 with black rings, Rubi black with yellow 

 rings. When it acquires what an ornith- 

 ologist would call its " adult plumage," it 

 is a rich velvetty black, with golden-brown 

 hairs on the back. It is often over three 

 inches long, and, feeding exposed in an 

 autumn afternoon, it is one of the most 

 easily found of all larvae. 



There are few beginners who have not 

 collected them freely, fed them carefully, 

 watched them long and anxiously, then 

 begun to wonder why they were not spin- 

 ning, or changing, or something. It seems 

 to eat as long as food can be supplied; and 

 then wanders about the breeding cage, as 

 if it wilfully insisted in disregarding the 

 young collector's desires for its welfare. 

 Well does the "writer remember his first 

 autumn experience with this insect. Fully 

 a hundred were collected, and armfuls of 

 food brought in daily for their sustenance. 

 The weather grew colder ; the leaves of 

 the plants they seemed to prefer — Rosa 

 Spinosisima and Geraneum Sanguineum — ■ 

 withered away, and nothing else could bo 

 found that they would eat. Snow fell, 

 and all food was hidden beneath it • and 

 still the " Foxes " crawled about the box, 

 and died one by one, of hunger I thought, 

 as I puzzled myself to account for it. 

 Correspondents I had none. Collectors, 

 beginners like myself, could give me no 

 information, aud there were no others to 

 whom to apply. When Christmas day 

 arrived, all my fine larvae were dead but 

 one, which managed to linger over into 

 the new year, and then died as the others 

 had done. About the middle of January 

 I found, on the sand banks, a few more 

 larvae- that had done better out in the cold 

 than those I had so carefully tended in- 

 doors. The snow was on the ground still, 



