Sometimes the larva comes out of its skin at the side; sometimes it has been seen to bite off portions of the skin. The most common way is that above described. The skin, when cast in this manner, resembles a sort of universal coat, which has fitted into every crack and joint of the insect's body; and just as a lady's glove, if we could suppose it tinted of a flesh-colour, and marked for the various markings on the hand, might be mistaken, if cast down after inflating it with air, for a hand cut off, so, only far more closely, does the cast skin represent, in the minutest particular, the larva which has emerged from it. It is a perfect mould of all its parts, even to the very antennæ, eyes, jaws, &c. "Thus," say the authors last quoted, "if you saved the skins cast by the larva of the insect called _Callimorpha_, or _Arctia Caja_, you would appear to have ten different specimens of caterpillars, furnished with every external necessary part, and differing only in size and in the colour, perhaps, of the hairs, and all representing the same individual." In order to show how completely this is the case, some singular experiments have been made by various observers, in the following manner:--Just before the larva was about to cast off its skin, they have, by means of a sharp instrument, cut off one or two of its feet. The larva was then allowed to moult, and was carefully examined, and it was invariably found that the feet cut off when in its old skin were also wanting when it appeared in its new robes; thus plainly proving that the feet were really sheathed in the old skin completely. It was just as if we had gloves on our hands and were to put one finger or more between a pair of sharp and powerful shears, we should, of course, find that when we took off the glove we should be short of one or two fingers! But the hairs are not thus sheathed. The old skin, if the larva was a hairy one, such as many of those with which we are familiar under the more popular title "caterpillars," is cast off with the hairs attached to it--a circumstance which makes the cast skin look still more like the real larva. How, then, it may be asked, does the larva acquire new hairs to take the place of the old ones? Were we to take a larva just before its moulting, and by a sharp and delicate instrument, to slit open and raise its old skin, we should soon perceive how this has been contrived. We should there perceive sundry little tufts of very delicate hairs, lying down smoothly on the surface of the larva's body, and arranged in certain directions, with great regularity. When the old skin is cast, in the course of a little time these hairs stand upright, and assume precisely the same appearance as those on the former skin.