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Spice-bush Silk-moth
Every country boy who lives in the Atlantic States is familiar with the cocoons, which in winter and spring he has found hanging from the twigs of the spice-bush, the sassafras, and other trees. As they dangle in the wind they are easily detected, though they are often wrapped in the dead leaf in which the caterpillar originally spun them. The larva of which, in addition to the figure given in Plate I, we furnish a cut herewith, is a rather striking object, the coral-red tubercles on the second and third anterior segments showing conspicuously against the bluish-green epidermis. The insect subsists in the larval stage upon a great variety of deciduous shrubs and trees, showing a special predilection for the Lauraceae, Liriodendron, Liquidambar, and the wild-cherry. It ranges over the Atlantic States from Florida to New England into southern Canada, and thence westward through the valley of the Mississippi to the eastern boundaries of the great plains. Whether the silk produced by this common and easily reared species could be utilized in such a way as to make its production commercially profitable is a problem to be solved in the future. No one up to the present time has succeeded either in reeling or carding the silk of the cocoons.