The Moths and Butterflies 
395 
seem to carry very far expedients of Nature for protection by deceit. Other 
common members of the family are the several species of Schizura, moths 
strongly resembling owlet-moths (Noctuidse) with their brown and gray 
and gray and blackish finely variegated fore wings and unmarked silky white 
wings. Their brown or greenish larvae, which feed on fruit-trees, forest 
trees, small fruits, and other shrubby plants, are distinguished by having 
a prominent horn or spined tubercle on the fourth body-ring behind the 
head. They are said to eat out a notch about the size of the body, in the edge 
of a leaf, fitting themselves along this notch, so that the prominent tubercle 
and other irregularities of the body seem to simulate the rounded edge of 
the leaf; they are thus well concealed. The moths, too, are much given 
to dissimulation. Each moth rests on the trunk or branches of the tree, 
Fig. 565.—Canker-worms, larvae of a geometric! moth. (After Slingerland; natural size.) 
head downward, with wings closely folded around the body and legs all 
drawn together, the dull-gray tone of the wings with their bits of lichen- 
green and whitish color giving the whole a marvelous resemblance to a bit 
of rough weathered bark. 
Familiar to all observers, although certainly not very often seen and 
rarely found in large numbers, are the inchworms, spanworms, or loopers 
