370 
LEPIDOPTERA. 
often they are very short and small. The tongue, for the 
most part, is invisible. Their wings cover the back like a 
steep roof; the under pair, being wider than common, are 
not entirely covered by the upper wings, but project beyond 
them at the siddfe of the body when closed. Their cater¬ 
pillars live on trees and shrubs, and some kinds herd together 
in considerable numbers or swarms ; they make their cocoons 
mostly or entirely of silk. The winged insect is assisted 
in its attempts to come forth, after its last change, by a 
reddish-colored liquid, which softens the end of its cocoon, 
and which, as some say, is discharged from its own mouth, 
or, as others with greater probability assert, escapes from 
the inside of the chrysalis the moment that the included 
moth bursts the shell. 
To this group belong the caterpillars that swarm in the 
unpruned nurseries and neglected orchards of the slovenly 
and improvident husbandman, and hang their many-coated 
webs upon the wild cherry-trees that are suffered to spring 
up unchecked by the wayside and encroach upon the borders 
of our pastures and fields. The eggs, from which they are 
hatched, are placed around the ends of the branches, forming 
a wide kind of ring or bracelet, consisting of three or four 
hundred eggs, in the form of short cylinders standing on 
their ends close together, and covered with a thick coat of 
brownish water-proof varnish (Plate VII. Fig. 16).* The 
caterpillars come forth with the unfolding of the leaves of 
the apple and cherry tree, during the latter part of April 
or the beginning of May. The first signs of their activity 
appear in the formation of a little angular web or tent, some¬ 
what resembling a spider’s web, stretched between the forks 
of the branches a little below the cluster of etrgs. Under the 
shelter of these tents, in making which they all work togeth¬ 
er, the caterpillars remain concealed at all times when not 
engaged in eating. In crawling from twig to twig and from 
* A good figure of a cluster of these eggs may be seen in the Boston Cultiva¬ 
tor, Vol. X. No. 10, for March 4, 1848. 
