Especial pains are taken to see that the tunnel is sufficiently wide, so that the little creature can crawl in with ease. If he wishes to remain set fast, he sticks the back of his body against the sides and rests safely with the aid of his hooks. In this position he can poke his head out of the ground, thus closing the entrance of his burrow, while in patient waiting for some unsuspicious wayfarer to pass over. As soon, however, as the luckless insect touches the top of his head, he relinquishes his hold within the tunnel and descends with great precipitation to the bottom, and thus his victim falls into the hole, where it is seized by the powerful jaws and its juices absorbed in a quiet, leisurely manner. The loose earth around the opening of the tunnel gives way on the approach of an insect, and thus the success of the cunning Cicindela is doubly insured.
Sometimes in the construction of a burrow, after a certain depth has been reached, the young Cicindela meets with a difficulty which he had not expected. A flat stone is encountered, and thus further progress in a vertical direction is prevented. If the obstacle, on account of its size, cannot be gone round, and the shaft is not deep enough for his purpose, it is not unusual for him to desert it and attempt the tunnelling of a home in some more desirable spot. He does not undertake a very long journey, for he knows too well the risk which he runs by so doing, as he is in danger of being assaulted by secret foes in the rear, an attack which the peculiar conformation of his hinder body ill fits him to resist. On land he is timid and cowardly, and well might he be, but within the protecting walls of his underground castle, with a pair of powerful swords with which to defend himself, he is the impersonation of fearlessness and courage.
When fully grown the larva closes up the mouth of its abode, and in quiet and solitude undergoes its metamorphosis, lying dormant during the winter months. But when the breath of warm spring days has melted the icy coldness of the earth, and filled the air with vivifying influences, then comes it forth in all the pomp and splendor of its nature—a winged existence.
It has been seen what a beautiful adaptation of means to an end is shown by the young Cicindela. Even the adult, or mature form, with its long, slender legs, so admirably formed for silence and fleetness of movement, which are alike necessary to pursuit of prey and escape from enemies, displays the wisdom of Him who breathed into all animated nature, no matter how small or how humble, the essence of His being, and endowed one and all with qualities of mind and body which should respond to environing conditions and thus prepare them to survive in the struggle for existence.
QUEEN OF AMERICAN SILK-SPINNERS.
No insect affords a better proof of high art in nature, and of the transcendent beauty of the Creator’s thoughts, than the Luna moth, which is as preëminent above her fellows as her namesake, the fair empress of the sky, above the lesser lights that dominate the night. Her elegant robes of green, set off with trimmings of purple, and jewelled with diamonds, added to her queenly grace and personal charms, will always distinguish her from the profanum vulgus of the articulata.
And now for a short biographical sketch of this remarkable beauty from the cradle to the grave, and beyond, after she has assumed her resurrection-attire, to the day when, her appointed work on earth being ended, she quietly lays her body down to mingle with its native clay.
In her childhood, or caterpillar state, her head is elliptical in shape, of a light pearly color, the rest of the body being a clear bluish-green. A faint yellow band stretches along each side, just below the line of her breathing-organs, from the first to the tenth segment, while the back, between the several body-rings, is crossed by narrow transverse bars, similar in coloration. Each segment, after the fashion of her kith and kin, is adorned with small pearly warts, tinged with purple, some five or six in number, each tipped with a few simple hairs. Three brown spots, bordered above with yellow, ornament the end of the tail. An interesting variety, whose general color is a dull reddish-brown, is sometimes met with, but the lateral and transverse stripes of yellow have disappeared, and the pearl-colored warts with edges of purple have assumed a richer hue and blaze like a coronet of rubies. When at rest, with the rings all bunched and body shortened, the infantile Luna is as thick as a man’s thumb, measuring but two inches in linear direction; but when she sets out upon her travels, feeling the dignity of her station in life, she stretches to her full length of three inches.
When have been completed her allotted days of feeding upon the leaves of the hickory, oak, walnut or sweet gum, and she is seriously contemplating the preparing of a shroud and casket in which to await her resurrection-morn, she casts about for leaves, which, when they are found, she securely draws together, and within the hollow space there is soon spun a very close and strong oval cocoon of silk, one and three-fourths inches in length, of chestnut-brown color, thin, and covered with warts and excrescences, but seldom showing the imprints of leaves. Cocoons of Luna so nearly resemble those of polyphemus, that many an experienced collector is greatly chagrined, after getting together a large supply of what he deems Luna cocoons, to find dusky, one-eyed polyphemi to issue from the silken tombs rather than a goodly throng, in delicate bridal attire, of proud empresses of the night. Polyphemus cocoons are, however, somewhat smaller than Lunas, white or dirty-white in color, rounded at each end, and sometimes angular, because of the leaves being unevenly moulded into their surfaces, and generally covered with a whitish meal-like powder.
