Caterpillars, with their relatively soft bodies, feeding openly on the leaves of plants, are exposed to the attacks of many enemies, and the various ways in which they obtain protection are well worth studying. A clothing of hairs[7] or spines is often present, and it is interesting to find that many species of our native Tiger and Eggar Moths (Arctiadae and Lasiocampidae) which pass the winter in the larval stage, have caterpillars with an especially dense hairy covering (fig. 17). Experiments have shown that hairy and spiny insects are distasteful to birds and other creatures that prey readily on smooth-skinned species, a conclusion that might well have been expected. Certain smooth caterpillars however appear to be protected by producing some nauseous secretion, which renders them unpalatable. Many of these, as the familiar cream yellow and black larva of the Magpie Moth (_Abraxas grossulariata_), are very conspicuously adorned, and furnish examples of what is known as 'warning coloration,' on the supposition that the gaudy aspect of such insects serves as an advertisement that they are not fit to eat, and that birds and other possible devourers thus learn to leave them alone. On the other hand, smooth caterpillars which are readily eaten by birds are usually 'protectively' coloured, so as to resemble their surroundings and remain hidden except to careful seekers. Many such caterpillars are green, the upper surface, which is naturally exposed to the light, being darker than the lower which is in shadow. When the caterpillar is large, the green area is often broken up by pale lines, longitudinal as on the larvae of many Owl Moths (Noctuidae) or oblique, as on the great caterpillars of most Hawk Moths (Sphingidae). Such an arrangement tends to make the insect less easily seen than were it to display a continuous area of the same colour. The 'looper' caterpillars mentioned above afford remarkable examples of 'protective' resemblance, for many of them show a marvellous likeness to the twigs of their food-plant, tubercles on the insect's body resembling closely the little outgrowths of the plant's cortex. It has been shown by E.B. Poulton (1892) that many caterpillars are, in their early stages, directly responsive to their surroundings as regards colour. Usually green when hatched, they remain green if kept among leaves or young shoots of plants, while they turn red, brown, or blackish if placed among twigs of these respective hues. This effect appears to be due to a direct response of the subcutaneous tissue to the rays of light reflected from the surrounding objects. The sensitiveness dies away as the caterpillar grows older, since little or no change of hue in response to a change of environment could be induced after the penultimate moult. [7] The 'hairs' of an insect are not in the least comparable to the hairs of mammals, being in truth, modified portions of the cuticle, secreted by special cells.