280 
LETTERS FROM ALABAMA* 
received, a pile of cotton nearly equal in height to 
the' whole length of the bale is laid on the top, 
and by the force of the jack-screw is gradually 
pressed down into the bale. 
Mules are a good deal used for farm purposes 
here, and good he-asses are imported expressly for 
breeding them. I have noticed a very curious 
circumstance connected with these animals, viz. 
that in a great number, perhaps in nine out of every 
ten, the legs are handed with transverse dark stripes^ 
more or less distinctly. If I remember aright, Mr. 
Bell, in his British Quadrupeds,” mentions a 
mule so marked, as an instance of the power of 
imagination in the dam, she having borne her first 
colt to a zebra, while the one with banded legs 
was a younger birth with an ass for its sire. But 
the extensive familiarity with mules which their 
abundance here has given me, induces me to 
suspect that in this case the assigned cause may 
have had no real connexion with the result. 
The tendency to a banded arrangement of colours 
is one of the marks by which the genus Asinus is 
distinguished from Equusj in which the disposition 
is rather to spots. 
One of the children lately found on a leaf of 
dog -wood a most singular caterpillar. It is about 
an inch in length, somewhat fivesided, the back 
flat, truncate at each end ; the head invisible when 
at rest, being drawn into the body, so that I had 
to turn it over a great many times before I could 
distinguish head from tail, which at last I did only 
by catching sight of the six little white feet ; for it 
has no prolegs, but the whole underpart except 
near the head is soft and fleshy, and clings with its 
