An equally familiar garden insect, the common ‘Tiger’ moth (Arctia caia) with its ‘woolly bear’ caterpillar, affords a life-cycle slightly differing from that of the ‘Magpie.’  The gaudy winged insects are seen in July and August, and lay their eggs on a great variety of plants.  The larvae hatched from these eggs begin to feed at once, and having moulted once or twice and attained about half their full size, they rest through the winter, the dense hairy covering wherewith they are provided forming an effective protection against the cold.  At the approach of spring they begin to feed again, and the fully-grown ‘woolly bear’ is a common object on garden paths in May and June.  Before midsummer it has usually spun its yellow cocoon under some shelter on the ground and changed into a pupa.

Another modification with respect to seasonal change is shown by the Turnip moth (Agrotis segetum) and other allied Noctuidae (Owl-moths).  These are insects with brown-coloured wings, flying after dark in June.  The dull greyish larvae feed on many kinds of low-growing plants, usually hiding in the earth by day and wandering along the surface of the ground by night, biting off the farmer’s ripening corn, or burrowing into his turnips or potatoes.  On account of the burrowing habits of this insect it can feed throughout the winter, except when a hard frost puts a temporary stop to its activity.  By April it has become fully grown and pupates in an earthen chamber a few inches below the surface.  The Turnip moth in our countries is partially double-brooded, a minority of the autumn caterpillars growing more rapidly than their comrades so that they pupate, and a second brood of moths appear in September.  These pair and lay eggs, the resulting caterpillars going as Barrett suggests (1896, vol.  III. p. 291) ’to reinforce the great army of wintering larvae.’

Such underground caterpillars, to a great extent protected from cold, can continue to feed through the winter.  With other species we find that the larva becomes fully grown in autumn, yet lives through the winter without further change.  This is the case with the Codling moth (Carpocapsa pomonella), a well-known orchard pest, which in our countries is usually single-brooded.  The moth is flying in May and lays her eggs on the shoots or leaves of apple-trees, more rarely on the fruitlets, into which however the caterpillar always bores by the upper (calyx) end.  Here it feeds, growing with the growth of the fruit, feeding on the tissue around the cores, ultimately eating its way out through a lateral hole, and crawling upwards if its apple-habitation has fallen, downwards if it still remains on the bough, to shelter under a loose piece of bark where it spins its cocoon about midsummer and hibernates still in the larval condition.  Not until spring is the pupal form assumed, and then it quickly passes into the imaginal state.  In the south of England, as F.V.  Theobald (1909) has lately shown, and also in southwestern Ireland, this species may be double-brooded, the usual condition on the European continent and in the United States of America.  There the midsummer larvae pupate at once and the moths of an August brood lay eggs on the hanging or stored fruit; in this case, again, however, the full-grown larva, quickly fed-up within the developed apples, is the wintering stage.