1. Lackey 2. Lackey Caterpillar
3. Vapourer, male4. Vapourer Caterpillar
5. Vapourer, female
If you look at the twigs of apple trees during the winter-time you will sometimes find that they are surrounded by bands of tiny greyish-white eggs, most neatly arranged in rows, which look just like tiny bracelets. These are the eggs of the Lackey Moth, and when they hatch a number of pretty little caterpillars make their appearance, and at once set to work to spin a big silken web among the leaves, in which they live. They are rather hairy, and have blue-grey heads with two black spots which look just like eyes, and bodies striped with white, and blue, and red, and yellow. And sometimes they are so plentiful that they strip whole branches, and even whole trees, of their leaves. When they are fully grown they spin yellow cocoons, in which a quantity of dust that looks just like powdered sulphur is mixed up, and change to smooth brown chrysalids, out of which the moths are hatched in July.
Lackey moths vary a good deal in colour, for some are light yellow, and some are dark yellow, and some are pale brown, and some are reddish-brown. Indeed, you may often catch six or eight of these moths, one after the other, and find that no two of them are quite alike.
On any warm, sunny day from the beginning of August till the middle of October you may see a little brown moth darting swiftly about, with a curious zigzag flight. First it flies for a few feet in one direction, then for a few feet in another direction, and then for a few feet in a third direction, and always at some little height from the ground. This is a male Vapourer Moth, and a very pretty little fellow he is, with bright chestnut-brown wings, and a crescent-shaped white mark in the middle of the front ones. But his mate is not in the least like him. In fact, if you were to see her, you would find it very hard to believe that she was a moth at all; for she has no wings, and looks just like a very fat grey grub. She is so fat, indeed, that she cannot even walk, and has to spend her whole life clinging to the cocoon in which she lived as a chrysalis. And when she has covered this cocoon all over with her little round white eggs she falls to the ground and dies.
The caterpillar of the Vapourer moth is very common. You may find it feeding upon the leaves of all sorts of trees and plants in the garden; and you can tell it at once by the row of little tufts of hair, just like tiny shaving-brushes, upon its back.