"Professor Wiggler"
HOW potent and abiding are the reminiscences of early youth! It is now some thirty years since I discovered "Professor Wiggler," and noted his peculiar eccentricities. And simply because I chanced first to disclose his wiggling identity on a lilac-bush, how irresistibly must his comical presence assert itself with my slightest thought of lilac, with the shape of its leaf, the faintest whiff of its fragrance, or even a distant glimpse of its spray!
Yonder, for instance, an old ruin of a home closely hemmed in with the well-known bushes spots the wintry landscape. What a place for Wigglers that will be next summer! Only a few days since, while walking down Broadway, New York, I paused for a momentary glimpse of a fine display of spring silks in a shop window, when Professor Wiggler, without the slightest rhyme or reason, suddenly wagged his comical head across my fancy, for my thoughts were far from professors and entomology. Following a frequent, quiet pastime of mine, of tracing the pedigree of such vagrant waifs of thought, I fell to pondering what could have summoned my unbidden friend, and I soon discovered. Why, how simple! The window before me was a very epitome of tender vernal hues—blushes of pale blossoms, yellows of pale anthers shadowed under petals, and quickened grays of bourgeoning hill-side woods, warm pulsing greens of budding leaves, each fabric bearing its label of the latest color-fad—coral gray, Chinese pink, primrose ash, old rose, and yonder was a faded purple bearing the title "lilac," which, of course, by its own irresistible telegraph through my retina, had called up the professor, and here he was.
Yes, it must be admitted, he is a rather unceremonious and promiscuous professor, but I can nevertheless recommend him to our young people as a most amusing and entertaining character. As I have said, I first made his acquaintance over thirty years ago, and in spite of his obtrusive ways in season and out of season, I nevertheless renew our actual acquaintance on the lilac-bush every summer, and I am always greeted with the same expressive "wiggle-waggle." It was in early August when I first discovered him, a small brown and white crook-backed creature about an inch long, clothed with scattered hairs, and clinging to the edge of a leaf, half of which he had eaten to the mid rib. As I approached he ceased eating, and began to wag his upraised head and body vehemently, and I promptly named him Wiggler, subsequently adding the "professor" for special reasons which I do not now recall. Careful search about the bush led to the discovery of a dozen or more of the caterpillars, all about the same size; and such was their novelty among the young insect-collectors that wigglers now became all the rage, and were at a premium on trade. The lilac-bushes of the town were scoured for caterpillars, and there was suddenly a "corner" on wigglers. A Professor Wiggler was now worth two bull's-eyes, and even two classical Polyphemuses, or three Attacus prometheus cocoons were considered only a just and dignified equivalent for a full-grown specimen of the new professor. For those which I had first found proved to be mere infants. As they waxed fat and healthy and lively on their daily supply of fresh lilac leaves, they soon reached the length of quite an inch and a half, and their humps and zigzag outline were proportionately developed, to say nothing of their wiggling propensities.
How well I remember the "whack! whack! whack!" from the inside of the pasteboard or wooden box as I entered the room, or chanced to make the slightest commotion in its neighborhood, as the captive pets threatened to dash their brains out in their demonstrations at my approach. Opening the box, I was always greeted with the same concert of whisking heads, the action being more particularly expressive from the long projecting lash of hairs, an inch and a quarter in length, with which the caterpillar's head was provided. One singular feature of these hairs had always puzzled me in the earlier life of the caterpillar, but was soon explained by close observation. At intervals of every quarter of an inch or so in the length of the slender tuft we find, in perfect specimens, a tiny brown speck—perhaps three or four—graduating in size to the tip of the hairs, where the atom is scarcely visible, or generally absent. A careful examination of their shape revealed the fact that they were exactly like the heads of the younger caterpillars in all their stages, and their presence and successive accumulation were readily explained by the moulting habits of the caterpillar, which is common to all caterpillars. By these telltale tokens we know that the professor has changed his clothes—let us see, one, two, three, four—perhaps five times.
When he first emerged from the egg on the lilac-leaf he was indeed a tiny atom; his head would make a small show laid upon our page. When about a week old, by dint of a good appetite and voracious feeding, he had managed to "outgrow his skin," as it were. He could literally hold no more, and realizing that nature would come to his relief, he began to spin a tiny web upon the leaf-stalk in which to secure his hooked feet for a temporary rest, sleeping off his dinner, as it were.
He is now a very quiet and circumspect young professor. It were indeed a dangerous experiment to wiggle in such a tight suit as now incloses him, so he remains immovable and resigned. A strange process is now going on in his physiology. Hour by hour his outer skin is becoming detached from the under skin, and now he is simply inclosed within its sac. The shell of his former head has been crowded off his face, as it were, and has slid down towards the mouth of the new head within. Shortly after this feature has taken place the imprisoned caterpillar becomes restless to burst his bonds, and a quiet working motion begins, which gradually forces the skin in wrinkles towards the tail of the body, of course drawing it tighter and tighter about the head, and with it the connection from the spiracles at the sides of the body. At last, with one final effort, the skin behind the head ruptures, and discloses the new skin beneath, and through the opening thus made the new head soon appears, and the entire new suit of clothes emerges in a few moments. But though the old clothes are worked off into a little shrunken pellet at the tail, the old head-shell is still retained, being attached to the hairs immediately back of the new head, and thus retained. Five or six times in the life of the caterpillar this same process is performed, each performance leaving its token; so that our "professor" enjoys the unique distinction of being able, in his mature years, to look up to the head he wore when he was a baby or youngster, and make it useful, too, in keeping off the flies as he ponders on the flight of time.
But this is not all our professor's peculiarities. One day, as I came to look at my hump-backed pets, I discovered that most of them had shrunk a full third, and had refused to eat and, what surprised me more, refused to wiggle. A closer examination of the box showed that while they had ignored the lilac leaves, they had been gnawing the pasteboard everywhere in the box, even perforating it with a number of holes. The captives in a thin wooden box were similarly affected, and numbers of holes were to be seen. What did it mean? I had been expecting daily to see my full-grown caterpillars either beginning their cocoons or suspending themselves by their tails in readiness for the chrysalis state. Yet they had done neither. Their time had evidently come, but they were not satisfied with their surroundings, and would seem to wish to escape; and yet, having gnawed their way to liberty, deliberately remained in prison! It was some days before I correctly interpreted their curious contradictory actions, and as I remember it now, my hint came from a spider-web which had spread its catch all beneath a lilac-bush, and upon which I discerned a number of tiny balls of sawdust which had chanced to fall upon it. Looking directly above, among the branches, I soon found a wiggler, not only gnawing the wood but with one-third of its body in a burrow in a twig the size of my finger. I had observed him thus for a few moments when he began to back out, drawing with him a tiny ball of sawdust, which he threw out with a slight wiggle, and soon resumed operations.
Leaving him to his work, I lost no time in taking the hint, and my box was soon criss-crossed with small twigs, and my remaining wigglers soon found themselves at home and littered my box with their chip pellets. The burrow is first made diagonally to the pith, and then follows the centre for about two-thirds of an inch. I remember having about a half-dozen caterpillars thus at work simultaneously. On the morrow, when I opened the box, all signs of caterpillars and burrows had vanished. Though I looked directly upon the spot where yesterday I had surely seen the open tunnel, no vestige of it now appeared, and its whereabouts could only be guessed by the slight rose-colored stain which the caterpillar had left on the bark below. What had happened?
The burrows had been completed in the night, and the caterpillars had retired into them, backward presumably, and then spun over the opening by a disk of silk, which they had finally, or in the process, tinted the exact color of the external surrounding bark. I have frequently exhibited one of these sticks, with its inclosed caterpillar, to curious friends, who were unable to locate, without long and careful scrutiny, the mysterious curtain. The twig, dried in a mild oven so as to kill the inclosed caterpillar, or with its farther side split off for his removal, would serve as an interesting permanent specimen, the delicate disk being otherwise ruptured by the final escape of the moth.
All of mine appeared in the first week of July of the next year. They were small, for the size of the caterpillar, yellowish-white "millers," the fore wings beautifully mottled and banded with brown, and each with three conspicuous round spots of dull red, which feature has secured the insect its specific name of "Trisignata"—Gramatophora trisignata being the name of our professor in learned circles.
His burrowing habits do not seem to be generally known, the only mention of which I have chanced to observe merely alluding to the fact that the "caterpillar has the unusual power of boring very smooth cylindrical holes in solid pine wood." But Professor Wiggler does not bore wood for a pastime, as we have seen.