STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
415 
as well as deciduous. But our American caterpillar is unable, 
I think, to subsist upon any trees of the evergreen class. A nest 
of the young worms, on being attached to the limb of a pine 
tree all died of starvation. A nest of half grown ones, tied 
among the foliage of a tamerack or larch all forsook the tree in 
the course of two or three days, without eating any of the leaves 
that I could discover. Another nest of half grown worms 
having consumed all the foliage of the bush on which they were 
hatched, and. being obliged to migrate elsewhere, came first to a 
spruce tree, but passed on without ascending it, as though aware 
it was unsuitable for their nourishment. And in those rare in¬ 
stances in which single full grown caterpillars may be met with 
upon the hemlock and pine, they have probably ascended these 
trees in search of a secure place for spinning their cocoons, and 
not to feed upon the leaves. 
Nor is our caterpillar by any means a general feeder upon de¬ 
ciduous trees. The experiments and observations which I have 
made, to ascertain upon what kinds of foliage it is able to sus¬ 
tain itself may here be briefly recited. It is well knowm that it 
decidedly prefers the wild or native black cherry to any other 
tree, and next to this it is most fond of the apple, although it is 
about equally fond of the choke cherry and of the cultivated 
garden cherry. Its nests may also be occasionally met with upon 
the bird or small red cherry, upon the wild plum and upon dif¬ 
ferent species of the thorn ( Cratcegus ), and I doubt not the cat¬ 
erpillar will thrive and grow to maturity upon almost auy of 
the trees and shrubs which pertain to the natural order Rosace.®, 
as I have repeatedly noticed it feeding upon the leaves of the 
shad bush ( Amelanchier ), the rose, &c. Some of the trees of this 
group, however, are unadapted to it; the peach, for instance. 
On the tenth of June, when the caterpillars had mostly attained 
their full size, a nest was noticed upon a peach tree, below r the 
belt of eggs from which it had hatched. But all the worms in 
this nest, were at that late date quite small, being only about a 
third grown. So far as a single observation can be relied upon, 
it appeared that this tree was unadapted to these caterpillars, 
and that the parent insect had erred in placing her eggs upon it, 
probably having mistaken it for a species of cherry. 
