. The American entomologist and botanist. state cannotlive without air, as well as without experiments performed with the chrysa-lids of the Tent Caterpillar go to disprove thisnotion. A number of cocodus were moistenedwith oil so as to exclude the air; in every in-stance the enclosed pupa perished without com-pleting its transformation. The nicety andcompactness with which the parts of an insectare folded up in its pupal envelope is, indeed,wonderful. No effort of human ingenuity couldreplace it there, after it has once , in his entertaining but fanciful workupon An
. The American entomologist and botanist. state cannotlive without air, as well as without experiments performed with the chrysa-lids of the Tent Caterpillar go to disprove thisnotion. A number of cocodus were moistenedwith oil so as to exclude the air; in every in-stance the enclosed pupa perished without com-pleting its transformation. The nicety andcompactness with which the parts of an insectare folded up in its pupal envelope is, indeed,wonderful. No effort of human ingenuity couldreplace it there, after it has once , in his entertaining but fanciful workupon Animated Nature, assorts that insects ofthis kind, when they have emerged from thepupal covering, expand their wings so rapidlythat the eye can scarcely attend their is very improbable, in any case, and in thespecies now before us, as I have often witnessed,the expansion of the wings is very slow andgradual, and yet steadily progressive, so thatthe time occupied in the operation does notusually exceed tiltcen minutes. [ The American Lackey moth, when fully de-veloped, measures about one inch and a halffrom tip to lip of the expanded wings. It isusually of a pale brick color, but individuals areoccasionally seen much darker, or of an ashy-brown color. Across the fore wings are twostraight, oblique whitish linos. 1he moderately pectinate, or feather-like, in themale, and very slightly so in the female. Thehollow tongue, or sucker, through which insectsof this order imbibe their nutriment, is whollywanting in this species, as, indeed, it is gener-ally in the particular group to which it course they take no food, and live but a short time. A number of these moths which wereput into a box immediately after they had comefrom their cocoons, were alive on the third day,but were all dead on the fourth. Their shortlives have but one object—the )>airing of thesexes and the deposition of the eg^s by thefemale, for a future generation. The follo
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Keywords: ., bookcen, bookdecade1870, booksubjectbotany, booksubjectentomology
