352 
LEPIDOPTERA. 
in their progress. Corn-fields, gardens, and even the rank 
weeds by the way-side, afford them temporary nourishment 
while wandering in search of a place of security from the 
tide and weather. They conceal themselves in walls, under 
stones, in hay-stacks and mows, in wood-piles, and in any 
other places in their way, which will afford them the proper 
degree of shelter during the winter. Here they make their 
coarse hairy cocoons, and change to chrysalids, in which form 
they remain till the following summer, and are transformed 
to moths in the month of June. 
In those cases where, from any cause, the caterpillars, 
when arrived at maturity, have been unable to leave the 
marshes, they conceal themselves beneath the stubble, and 
there make their cocoons. Such, for the most part, is the 
course and duration of the lives of these insects in Massa- 
chusetts ; but in the Middle and Southern States two broods 
are brought to perfection annually, and even here some of 
them run through their course sooner, and produce a second 
brood of caterpillars in the same season ; for I have obtained 
the moths between the 15th and 20th of May, and again be- 
tween the 1st and the 10th of August. Those which were 
disclosed in May passed the winter in the chrysalis form, 
while the moths which appeared in August must have been 
produced from caterpillars that had come to their growth and 
gone through all their transformations during the same sum- 
mer. This, however, in Massachusetts, is not a common 
occurrence ; for by far the greater part of these insects 
appear at one time, and require a year to complete then- 
several changes. 
The full-grown caterpillar measures one inch and three 
quarters or more in length. It is clothed with long hairs, 
which are sometimes black and sometimes brown on the back 
and fore part of the body, and of a lighter brown color on 
the sides. The hairs, like those of the other Arctians, grow 
in spreading clusters from warts, which are of a yellowish 
color in this species. The body, when stripped ot the hairs, 
