138 
LETTERS FROM ALABAMA. 
leaves, and apparently having no tendency to 
make a turf, at least under our burning sun. In 
winter, rye is sown for the cattle, and other substi- 
tutes for pasture are found ; and, after harvest, 
those planters who raise a field of oats or wheat 
turn them into the stubble ; this, however, affords 
but sorry picking ; and at this season of the year 
the poor cows are very lean, and doubtless often go 
hungry. I missed the green grass very much when 
I came first. 
When I see any insect, bird, or flower, that I 
have been familiar with in other regions, it affords 
me feelings of peculiar pleasure. The other day 
one of the children brought me that elegant and 
delicate little creature, the Star Crane-fly {Bittaco- 
morpha crassipes)^ an insect common to Newfound- 
land, Canada, and this extreme. I looked on it 
quite as an old acquaintance, with feelings almost 
like personal friendship. 
In the school-yard there are several towering 
oak-trees left for the purpose of shade. Examining 
the trunks of these the first day I saw them — which, 
as a good entomologist and true, I was bound to do 
— I found in one several round holes about half an 
inch in diameter, as if made by an auger; and from 
one projected the pupa-skin of some very large moth, 
being near three inches long. Some days after I 
found another in a similar situation, and after that 
another. As my curiosity was roused, I procured an 
axe, and with the aid of a young man began to cut 
away some of the wood of the tree, exposing many 
passages filled with excrement, and some of them 
lined with web. We at length exposed two very 
large caterpillars, one of which we unfortunately 
cut in two, as we also did a pupa nearly matured. 
