INSECTS
struction of a tent, but the early days are not always spent alike, even under similar circumstances, nor is the tent always begun in the same manner.
In the State of Connecticut, where the season for both plants and insects is much later than in the latitude of Washington, three broods of tent caterpillars were observed hatching on April 8 of the same year. These caterpillars also met with dull and chilly weather that kept them huddled on their egg coverings for several days. After four days the temperature moderated sufficiently to allow the caterpillars to move about a little on the twigs, but none was seen feeding till the 14th—six
Fig. 146. Young tent caterpillars matted on a flat sheet of web spun in the crotch between two branches. (About natural size)
days after the hatching. Yet they had increased in size to about one-eighth of an inch in length.
Wherever these caterpillars camped in their wanderings over the small apple trees they inhabited, they spun a carpet of silk to rest upon, and there the whole family collected in such a crowded mass that it looked like a round, furry mat (Fig. 146). The carpets afforded the caterpillars a much safer bed than the bare, wet bark of the tree, for if the sleepers should become stupefied by cold the claws of their feet would mechanically hold them fast to the silk during the period of their helplessness. The test came on the 16th and the night following, when the campers were soaked by hard, cold rains
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