Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1877 — Cats and Caterpillars. [ARTICLE]

Cats and Caterpillars.

Im the course of a lecture on the relations between plants and insects, delivered before the Society of Arts in London by Sir John Lubbock, the speaker instituted a singular comparison between the cotot- ! ing of caterpillars and cats. “ There are five principal types of coloring among caterpillars,” he remarked f> “those which live inside wood pr leaves, or underground, are generally of a uniform pale line; the small leaf-eating caterpillars are green, like the leaves on which they feed. The other three types may, •iparva licet eomnonere mugnie, be compared with the throe types of coloring

among cate. There are the ground-cats—-such as the Hou or puma—which are brownish or sandcolor, like the open places they frequent So also caterpillars wijlch conceal themselves by day at the roots of their food-plant, tend, as we bare seen, even if originally green, to assume tlit color of the earth. The spotted or eyed cals—such as the leopard—live among trees; and their peculiar coloring renders them less conspicuous by mimtaking spots of light which penetrate through foliage. Lastly there are the jojigle-cats, of which the tiger is the typical species, and which have stripes, rendering them very difficult to see among the brown grass which they frequent. It may, perhaps, be said that this comparison falls, because the stripes of tigers are perpendicular, while those of caterpillars are either longitudinal or oblique. This, however, so far from constituting a real difference, confirms the explanation, because in each case the direction <ff the lines follows those of the foliage. The tiger, that walks horizontally on the ground, has transverse bars; the caterpillar, which clings to the grass in a vertical position, has longitudinal lines, while those which live on large-veined leaves have oblique lines, like the oblique riba of the leaves.”