STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
427 
windows and doors. They still prefer the cherry and apple to 
all other food. One season on looking through an orchard of 
young apple trees at this time, I was surprised to find some of 
these caterpillars upon almost every tree. They must have come 
from considerable distances, as every nest in the orchard and its 
vicinity had been destroyed two or three weeks before. 
It is for the purpose of finding secure retreats in which to form 
their cocoons that the caterpillars thus disperse themselves. The 
cocoons are mostly spun about the end of the first week in June. 
They are placed commonly in a horizontal position, in crevices 
in the rough bark of trees, on the lower edges of boards where 
they are nailed to the posts of fences, on the under sides of rails, 
in the corners at the lower side of clapboards of buildings, be¬ 
neath the cornices, and in a variety of similar situations where 
they will be sheltered from the rain. They are held in their 
places by numerous loose crinkled threads on their outer sur¬ 
face. 
The cocoons are oval, white or pale yellow, hardly an inch 
long and 0.40 in diameter. They are rather 
loosely woven, and so thin that the inclosed 
insect may be discerned through their sides. 
Their meshes, however, are filled with a kind of thin paste, 
which when dry crumbles to a flue powder resembling sulphur, 
which sifts from the cocoons when they are handled. The loose 
texture of the cocoon enables the moth when hatched to crowd 
itself out through one end of it, forming a large round opening 
therein, and giving to this end afterwards the blunt appearance 
shown on the left end of the above figure. The moth also dis¬ 
charges a colored fluid which wets and softens this end of the 
cocoon and thus facilitates the operation of working a hole 
through it; and this fluid also stains the orifice to a greater or 
less extent, making it a light tawny yellow color. 
The chrysalis which lies within this cocoon is variable in its 
size, measuring 0.65 to 0 80 in length and about 0.28 
in thickness. The accompanying figure will give the 
reader an idea of its appearance. Its surface is densely 
covered with fine short erect hairs, except upon the head and 
the sheaths in which the wings, legs and antennae arc inclosed, 
