The Moths and Butterflies 
41 2 
pillars, trusting to the uncomfortable mouthful of hairs they offer their 
bird enemies, travel conspicuously about in the open with a characteristic 
nervously hurrying gait. Thus the Arctians become familiar to collector 
and observer. 
The woolliest woolly bear is the larva, sometimes called “ hedgehog,” of the 
Isabella tiger-moth, Pyrrharctia (Isia) Isabella (PI. VII, Fig. 3), common all 
over the United States; it is covered with a stiff furry evenly shorn coat black at 
either end and red-brown in the middle, and is commonly seen in the autumn 
traveling rapidly about in open places. It hibernates in larval stage under 
loose bark or logs or sidewalks, and, after a brief activity in the spring, pupates 
within a slight cocoon made up of silk and its own brown and black hairs. 
The moth which issues soon is dull orange with the front wings variegated 
with dusky and spotted with black; the hind wings are lighter and also 
black-spotted; it expands 2 inches. The caterpillars feed on various plants, 
sometimes becoming destructive, when in sufficient numbers, to black¬ 
berry and raspberry bushes and to nursery stock. Lugger says that they 
are especially susceptible. to attack by muscardine , a parasitic fungus disease 
much feared by silkworm-growers. “Hedgehogs” killed by muscardine are 
found stiffly attached to their food-plants with a whitish powder over the 
body at the base of the dense hair covering. 
The yellow bears, common caterpillars on the leaves of vegetables, 
flowering plants, and fruits, distinguished by their dense but uneven coat 
of long creamy-yellow, light or even dark brown hairs, are the larvae of the 
beautiful snowy-white miller-moth, Spilosoma virginica. The wings bear a 
few (two to four) small black dots, and the abdomen is orange-colored 
with three rows of black spots. The larvae pupate in the fall in cocoons 
composed almost wholly of their own long barbed hairs, and the moths issue 
in the spring. There is usually a second brood each year. This moth is 
kept in check by many parasites, few other insects having to contend with 
so many of these insidious enemies of their own animal class. 
The most destructive member of the family is the fall web-worm, Hyphan- 
tria cunea , which makes the large unsightly silken “nests” in plum-trees, both 
wild and cultivated, so familiar in late summer and autumn. The eggs 
are deposited in regular clusters of 400 or more on the plum-leaves, and the 
hatching pale-yellow larvae spin small silky web-nests close together which 
finally get included in one large one. The full-grown larvae are pale yellow¬ 
ish or greenish with a broad dusky stripe along each side; they are covered 
with whitish hairs which rise from black and orange-yellow warts. They 
often hang from the nest or branches by a long silken thread. They pupate 
in crevices of the bark and other sheltered places on the ground, passing 
the winter in this stage. The milk-white moths, sometimes with small 
black spots on the wings, sometimes unspotted, issue in late spring or early 
