Attention being thus directed to the quarter whence an assailant has lowered himself down, the caterpillars above will be found in clusters, sometimes amounting to hundreds, clinging to the branches and the bark, with a few straggling over the leaves or suspended from them by lines.  These pests are so annoying to children as well as destructive to the foliage, that it is often necessary to singe them off the trees by a flambeau fixed on the extremity of a pole; and as they fall to the ground they are eagerly devoured by the crows and domestic fowls.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Another caterpillar which feeds on the jasmine flowering Carissa, stings with such fury that I have known a gentleman to shed tears while the pain was at its height.  It is short and broad, of a pale green, with fleshy spines on the upper surface, each of which seems to be charged with the venom that occasions this acute suffering.  The moth which this caterpillar produces, Neaera lepida, Cramer; Limacodes graciosa, Westw., has dark brown wings, the primary traversed by a broad green band.  It is common in the western side of Ceylon.  The larvae of the genus Adolia are also hairy, and sting with virulence.]

The Wood-carrying Moth.—­There is another family of insects, the singular habits of which will not fail to attract the traveller in the cultivated tracts of Ceylon—­these are moths of the genus Oiketicus[1], of which the females are devoid of wings, and some possess no articulated feet.  Their larvae construct for themselves cases, which they suspend to a branch frequently of the pomegranate[2], surrounding them with the stems of leaves, and thorns or pieces of twigs bound together by threads, till the whole presents the appearance of a bundle of rods about an inch and a half long; and, from the resemblance of this to a Roman fasces, one African species has obtained the name of “Lictor.”  The German entomologists denominated the group Sacktraeger, the Singhalese call them Dara-kattea or “billets of firewood,” and regard the inmates as human beings, who, as a punishment for stealing wood in some former state of existence, have been condemned to undergo a metempsychosis under the form of these insects.

[Footnote 1:  Eumeta, Wlk.]

[Footnote 2:  The singular instincts of a species of Thecla, Dipsas Isocrates, Fab., in connection with the fruit of the pomegranate, were fully described by Mr. Westwood, in a paper read before the Entomological Society of London in 1835.]

[Illustration:  THE WOOD-CARRYING MOTH.]

The male, at the close of the pupal rest, escapes from one end of this singular covering, but the female makes it her dwelling for life; moving about with it at pleasure, and entrenching herself within it, when alarmed, by drawing together the purse-like aperture at the open end.  Of these remarkable creatures there are five ascertained species in Ceylon:  Psyche Doubledaii, Westw.; Metisa plana; Walker; Eumeta Cramerii, Westw.; E.  Templetonii, Westw.; and Cryptothelea consorta, Temp.