458 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
niCKORY. LEAVES. 
first comes out it has a strong odor, exactly like that of opium, or 
the flowers of the poppy, and the pupa shell has the same smell 
also. It is common for the larger Lepidopterous insects when 
newly changed from their pupa state and before they take wing, 
to eject a few drops of an opake fluid, which is usually of a red 
color. In former times, before this fact was known, a whole 
brood of a particular species happening to come out on a single 
night in summer has so covered the leaves and grass with these 
drops over a wide extent of country as to lead to the confident 
belief that a shower of blood had fallen—a phenomenon which 
superstition would naturally regard as an omen of most alarming 
portent. The fluid emitted by the Regal hickory moth is of a 
milk-white color and of the consistence of thin paint, and it is 
more copious than in any other insect I have reared, a single indi¬ 
vidual ejecting over a table spoonful. 
183 . Hickory tussock moth, Lophocampa Carya, Harris. (Lcpidoptcra. 
Arctiidae.) 
In July and August, eating the tender leaves at the tips of the 
limbs, companies of snow-wdiite caterpillars with rows of large 
black dots, and along the top of their backs eight black tufts ol 
converging hairs and two black pencils of longer hairs towards 
each end; growing to an inch and a half in length and in shel¬ 
tered corners and crevices spinning ash-gray oval cocoons with 
rounded ends, which give out the moth the following June, this 
being a pale ochre-yellow miller, its fore wings with roundish 
white spots edged with tawny yellow rings, the hind ones often 
united together and forming two or three rows parallel with the 
hind margin. Width 1.70 to 2.10. See Transactions, 1854, p. 863. 
This caterpillar has been unusually numerous the present year, 
1857. It has been tenfold more abundant than it was two years 
ago when my account of it was drawn up. And it proves to be 
a more general feeder than has been hitherto supposed. Though 
it evidently prefers the walnut, butternut and sumach, it is com¬ 
mon on the elm and ash also, and I have even met with clusters 
of these caterpillars upon the tamerack or larch. As they ap¬ 
proach maturity they separate and stray off to other trees, and 
may then be seen on rose bushes, on the apple, oak, locust, &c., 
the same individual often remaining several days in one place. 
