This insect feeds on the leaves of many of our shade and fruit trees and is quite abundant throughout the eastern United States. The winter is passed in the egg stage, the eggs being laid in clusters on the old cocoons of the female moths, covered by a white froth which quickly hardens, forming a crust. These egg masses and the cocoons on which they occur are found on the larger limbs and trunks of the trees and sometimes on the smaller twigs, generally in the latter case with a leaf more or less bound to the cocoon, thus rendering these more noticeable during the winter.

The eggs hatch in the spring and the cater pillars feed till full grown in June. They are then an inch and a half or more in length, yellow and black in color, and have two long pencils of black hairs at the head and a third at the hinder end of the body, besides four short, dense, yellowish, very noticeable tufts in a row a short distance behind the head, which is coral red. The caterpillars now go to the trunk and larger limbs, where they spin their silken cocoons, from which the adult moths soon escape.

The female moth being wingless, lays her eggs on the outside of the cocoon from which she emerged, covering them with a white froth, as already described. The eggs soon hatch and the caterpillars crawl to the leaves, where they feed during the latter part of July and August. When full grown, they in their turn go to the limbs and trunk to form their cocoons, from which the second generation of moths escape and lay their eggs which winter over.

There are, accordingly, two generations of this insect each year, the feeding periods of the caterpillars being during May and early June, and late July and August.

To check the destruction caused by this insect, the egg clusters covered by the white crust may be gathered and burned whenever they are noticed. Spraying with arsenate of lead early in May and again the latter part of July will destroy the caterpillars, but is unnecessary if the egg clusters have been attended to. Banding the trunks of trees not infested, with Tree Tanglefoot, will protect these if their branches do not touch those of infested trees, as the female is wingless, and to reach the trees she or the caterpillars must crawl up the trunks.