STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETT. 
803 
HARDER tiger-hoth. its eggs, caterpillars described, the coooon and chrysalis. 
or red color with the hind wings, with a few brown spots upon them; and 
in' still other instances they are white with but a faint tinge of yellow. The 
hind wings sometimes have their spots diminished and nearly obliterated. 
In other instances these spots are increased in number and size; again, 
they become confluent, forming two broad black bands across the wing; 
and finally, the whole wing is black and without spots. The Arctia Par¬ 
thenon it cannot be doubted is one of the latter varieties of this species, in¬ 
termediate between the banded winged and black winged varieties. It is 
erroneously credited to Kirby in the Smithsonian Catalogue of Lepidoptera. 
Itwas described and figured by Dr. Harris, in Agassiz’ Lake Superior, and 
is essentially distinguished as having the base and inner margin of its 
hind wings black with the remaining portion yellow crossed by a broad 
black band. 
The female moth above mentioned dropped seven hundred and forty-four 
eggs in the course of four days after her capture. Being so prolific it is 
evident this insect would very soon become as abundant in our country as 
it is in Europe if it were npt checked in its increase. It must be, that 
nearly all the caterpillars of each generation are destroyed, probably by 
birds. Judging from the proceedings of the female when in confinement, 
her eggs are laid upon the surface of leaves and firmly glued thereto in 
clusters of from fifty to one hundred, the eggs in each cluster being placed 
for the most part in contact with each other in regular rows. The eggs are 
quite small, being about 0.034 in diameter. They are globular, shining, 
white, with a large faint spot on their summit of a watery appearance. 
The caterpillars which come from these eggs grow to about two inches 
in length and have a thick cylindrical body which authors describe as being 
of a deep black color, densely covered with long soft hairs which arise in 
bundles from elevated warts. These hairs are of a bright red color bn the 
three first rings and along the sides, and on the rest of the body are black 
with their ends gray. The warts from which the red hairs arise are of a 
bluish gray color; those from which the black ones come are blackish brown. 
Three of these warts of a blue color and placed in a row one above the 
other on each side of each ring are most obvious to the eye. The breathing 
pores form a row of shining white dots along each side. The head is shin¬ 
ing black; the underside and feet are blackish brown. From all the other 
caterpillars of our country this is particularly distinguished by the three 
blue warts on each side of each segment, and the conspicuous row of white 
dots along each side of the body. As it approaches maturity, however, its 
unusually large size will alone suffice to point it out. It would appear to 
he this creature to which Hiawatha is represented to refer, in Longfellow’s 
much admired poem, as 
“ Tho mighty caterpillar 
Way-muk-kwana, with tho bearskin, 
King of all tho caterpillars!” 
When it is fully grown it incloses itself in a grayish brown cocoon of a 
?° closely woven texture, intermixed with the hairs of its body. In this 
‘changes to a chrysalis, having the form of an elongated egg, of a shining 
ack color with the sutures yellowish brown and the pointed end two-lobed 
