Packard.] 
INSECTS OE THE GARDEN. 
47 
except towards the base ; they are as long as the body, and 
while longer than in the female are also somewhat flattened 
out. The thorax has the wing-scales and the protliorax, or 
collar, honey-yellow. The under side and tip of the abdo¬ 
men are honey-yellow. 
The injury done to currant and gooseberry bushes is very 
great. They strip the bushes, eating the leaves down to the 
leaf-stalk, myriads clustering upon the branches. The birds 
evidently do not feed upon them, and thus in dealing with 
this insect we are deprived of one of the most powerful 
agencies in nature for restraining a superabundance of insect 
life. We can scarcely realize the amount of good done to 
the farmer and gardener by insectivorous birds. 
As this is an important and practical subject, let us digress 
for a moment, to notice some facts brought out by Mr. J. J. 
Weir, a member of the London Entomological Society, on 
the insects that seem distasteful to birds. He finds by 
caging up birds whose food is of a mixed character (purely 
insect-eating birds could not be kept alive in confinement), 
that all hairy caterpillars were uniformly uneaten. Such 
caterpillars are the “yellow bears” (Arctia and Spilosoma), 
the salt-marsh caterpillars (Leucarctia acrcca ), the cater¬ 
pillar of the vaporer moth (Orgyia), and the spring larvae of 
butterflies ; with these may perhaps be classed the European 
currant saw fly. He was disposed to consider that the 
“flavor of these caterpillars is nauseous, and not that' the 
mechanical troublesomeness of the hairs prevents their being 
eaten. Larvae which spin webs, and are gregarious, are eaten 
by birds, but not with avidity; they appear very much to 
dislike the web sticking to their beaks, and those com¬ 
pletely concealed in the web are left unmolested. When 
branches covered with the web of Hyponomeuta evonymella 
(a little moth of the Tinea family) were introduced into 
the aviary, those larvae only which ventured beyond the 
protection of the web w'ere eaten.” “ Smooth-skinned, gaily- 
15 
