in Zoology, the name of all winged insects when in their reptile or worm state. See ENTOMOLOGY Index.

Method of Destroying CATERPILLARS on Trees.—Take a chafing dish with lighted charcoal, and placing it under the branches that are loaded with caterpillars, throw some pinches of brimstone upon the coals. The vapour of the sulphur, which is mortal to these insects, will not only destroy all that are on the tree, but prevent it from being infested with them afterwards. A pound of sulphur will clear as many trees as grow on several acres. This method has been successfully tried in France. In the Journal Oeconomique, the following is said to be infallible against the caterpillars feeding on cabbage, and perhaps may be equally serviceable against those that infest other vegetables. Sow with hemp all the borders of the ground where you mean to plant your cabbage; and, although the neighbourhood is infested with caterpillars, the space enclosed with the hemp will be perfectly free, not one of the vermin will approach it.

CATERPILLAR-Eaters, a name given by some authors to a species of worms bred in the body of the caterpillar, and which eat its flesh; these are owing to a certain kind of fly that lodges her eggs in the body of this animal, and they, after their proper changes, become flies like their parents.

M. Reaumur has given us, in his history of insects, some very curious particulars in regard to these little worms. Every one of them, he observes, spins itself a very beautiful case of a cylindric figure, made of a very strong sort of silk; these are the cases in which this animal spends its state of chrysalis; and they have a mark by which they may be known from all other animal productions of this kind, which is, that they have always a broad stripe or band surrounding their middle, which is black when the rest of the case is white, and white when that is black. M. Reaumur has had the pains and patience to find out the reason of this singularity, which is this: the whole shell is spun of a silk produced out of the creature's body; this at first runs all white, and towards the end of the spinning turns black. The outside of the case must necessarily be formed first, as the creature works from within: consequently this is truly white all over, but it is transparent, and shows the last spun or black silk through it. It might be supposed that the whole inside of the shell should be black; but this is not the case: the whole is fashioned before this black silk comes; and this is employed by the creature, not to line the whole, but to fortify certain parts only; and therefore is all applied either to the middle, or to the two ends omitting the middle; and so gives either a black band in the middle, or a blackness at both ends, leaving the white in the middle to appear. It is not unfrequent