A comparatively small number of insects pass the winter in the larval or active stage of the young.  Of these, perhaps the best known is the brown “woolly worm” or “hedgehog caterpillar,” as it is familiarly called.  It is thickly covered with stiff black hairs on each end, and with reddish hairs on the middle of the body.  These hairs appear to be evenly and closely shorn, so as to give the animal a velvety look; and as they have a certain degree of elasticity, and the caterpillar curls up at the slightest touch, it generally manages to slip away when taken into the hand.  Beneath loose bark, boards, rails, and stones, this caterpillar may be found in mid-winter, coiled up and apparently lifeless.  On the first bright, sunny days of spring it may be seen crawling rapidly over the ground, seeking the earnest vegetation which will furnish it a literal “breakfast.”  In April or May the chrysalis, surrounded by a loose cocoon formed of the hairs of the body interwoven with coarse silk, may be found in situations similar to those in which the larva passed the winter.  From this, the perfect insect, the Isabella tiger moth, Pyrrharctia isabella Smith, emerges about the last of June.  It is a medium sized moth, dull orange in color, with three rows of small black spots on the body, and some scattered spots of the same color on the wings.

By breaking open rotten logs one can find in mid-winter the grubs or larvae of many of the wood-boring beetles, and, beneath logs and stones near the margins of ponds and brooks, hordes of the maggots or larvae of certain kinds of flies may often be found huddled together in great masses.  The larvae of a few butterflies also live over winter beneath chips or bunches of leaves near the roots of their food plant, or in webs of their own construction, which are woven on the stems close to the buds, whose expanding leaves will furnish them their first meal in spring.

Many insects pass the winter in the quiescent or pupal stage; a state exceedingly well fitted for hibernating, requiring as it does, no food, and giving plenty of time for the marvellous changes which are then undergone.  Some of these pupae are enclosed in dense silken cocoons, which are bound to the twigs of the plants upon which the larvae feed, and thus they swing securely in their silken hammocks through all the storms of winter.  Perhaps the most common of these is that of the brown Cecropian moth, Attacus cecropia L., the large oval cocoon of which is a conspicuous object in the winter on the twigs of our common shade and fruit trees.  Many other pupae may be found beneath logs or on the under side of bark, and usually have the chrysalis surrounded by a thin covering of hairs, which are rather loosely arranged.  A number pass the cold season in the earth with no protective covering whatever.  Among these is a large brown chrysalis with a long tongue case bent over so as to resemble the handle of a jug.  Every farm boy has ploughed or spaded it up in the spring, and is it but the pupa of a large sphinx moth, Protoparce celeus Hub., the larva of which is the great green worm, with a “horn on its tail,” so common on tomato plants in the late summer.