Sometimes it makes a confused tortuous jumble of paths, so that it is not easy to discover any definite course.
Sometimes it prefers the edges of the leaves, and skirts them with strange exactness, adapting its course to every notch, and following the outline as if it were tracing a plan.
This propensity seems to exhibit itself most strongly in the deeply cut leaves. And the shape or direction of the path seems to be as property belonging to this species of the insect which makes it; for there may be tracks of totally distinct forms, and yet the insects producing them are found to belong to the same species.
If the twigs of an ordinary thorn bush be examined during the winter months, many of them will be seen surrounded with curious little objects, called “fairy bracelets” by the vulgar, and by the learned “ova of Clisiocampa Neustria”. These are the eggs of the Lackey Moth, and are fastened round the twigs by the mother insect, a brown-coloured moth, that may be found in any number at the right time.
It is wonderful how the shape of the egg is adapted to the peculiar form into which they have to be moulded, and how perfectly they all fit together. Each egg is much wider at the top than at the bottom; and this increase of width is so accurately proportioned, that when the eggs are fitted together round a branch, the circle described by their upper surfaces corresponds precisely with that of the branch.
These eggs are left exposed to every change of the elements, and are frequently actually enveloped in a coat of ice when a frost suddenly succeeds a thaw. But they are guarded from actual contact with ice and snow by a coating of varnish which is laid over them, and which performs the double office of acting as a waterproof garment and of gluing the eggs firmly together. So tightly do they adhere to each other, that if the twig be cut off close to the bracelet the little egg circlet can be slipped off entire.