468 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
gnawing the margin, which rapidly melts away as they progress 
in their operations. If at rest they are all crowded together as 
closely as they can stow themselves, upon the twig where they 
have last been feeding, clinging to it with their four middle 
pairs of feet and with the ends of their bodies raised upwards. 
If the limb be touched or any other alarm is given them they 
all suddenly throw their tails upward at right angles with the 
body and curve their heads backward over their backs, with 
their anterior pairs of feet projecting outwards and resembling 
little black prickles; and they remain rigidly fixed and motion¬ 
less in this grotesque posture for several moments and until the 
apprehended danger has passed away. 
The moths begin to make their appearance upon the wing each 
year as early as the middle of June and continue till the end of 
July. Each female deposits her whole stock of eggs in a single 
clustre upon the under side of one of the leaves at the end of a 
limb. The eggs are from seventy to a hundred in number, white, 
globular, about three-hundredths of an inch in diameter, placed 
side by side in nearly straight rows, and securely glued to each 
other and to the surface of the leaf. The young worm gnaws a 
large opening through the top of the shell to make its exit. 
Those eggs which are first laid are hatched about the twentieth 
of July; others are fully a month later in giving out their broods. 
Thus some colonies of worms that are almost full grown will be 
met with when others are small and but a few days old. 
The young worms eat only the pulpy under surface of the leaf, 
leaving its upper surface and veins entire. But when the brood 
has thus fed upon two or three leaves they acquire sufficient 
strength to consume the whole substance of the leaf, so that only 
its stem and a part of the mid-vein is left. The tender succulent 
leaves growing at the end of the limb where the worms have 
been placed by their parent, are first devoured; and as the worms 
advance in size and become more robust, they gradually as they 
move along down the limb come to leaves which are older and 
more tough and leathery, such as they would not have been able 
to feed upon when they were young and small. When the last 
leaves upon one twig or branch have been consumed, they crawl 
away to another, to finish their meal. Two or three stragglers 
