STATK rO.MOLOC.ICAL SOCIKTV. 83 



You probably see it fluttering arouiul at dusk. This is nia<le up 

 in what we call a life history. I wish we could have these life 

 histories in every school in tlie State. Children are so inter- 

 ested if they see anything of this sort, to hear the name. 

 Now those people who have read "Freckles" by the same 

 author as the Girl of the Limberlost — Freckles was a boy and 

 that was a nickname for him — remember where she tells about 

 Freckles seeing the Luna moth hatch. He watched that moth 

 come out of the cocoon and he was consumed with a desire to 

 know what that wonderful thing was. He could not express 

 his feelings, because he wanted to know what it w^as, what the 

 name of it was. how long it would live, and what it would 

 amount to. And children as a rule have that same feeling 

 about these things. If they see them once they want to know 

 the name. Now' children will often bring in caterpillars to 

 their parents. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred, and men 

 too, are afraid of caterpillars, and if a child brings one in they 

 tell him to carry that ugly thing out and kill it. They think 

 everything that is a caterpillar is dangerous, whereas there are 

 only two kinds of caterpillars in this State that are dangerous. I 

 guess you all know the brown-tail by this time, you know it is 

 dangerous, and yet I don't believe that half of the people who 

 clean the caterpillars off of their trees can pick out a brown-tail 

 caterpillar if it is put in with a lot of other hairy ones. You 

 know it is brown-haired l)ut very few people can tell just 

 what it is. Here is a life history of the Cecropia moth : the 

 eggs on a branch, the caterpillar into which the egg grows, 

 the cocoon which the caterpillar spins when it gets its full 

 growth and stays in through the winter. Now these cocoons 

 are very common. Here are some just as they are found on 

 branches. Well, half of the people that fight those think they 

 are brown-tail moth nests, and yet when you come to really 

 look at them you can see there is a great difference. These 

 caterpillars spin their cocoons onto the branches and they hang 

 there all winter. Any one finding one of those, if he picks it 

 and takes it into the house will see beautiful moths hatch in the 

 spring. I presume thousands are burned up every year. I 

 brought quite a number of these here that I would like to give 

 to the teachers if there are any that would like to have them, 

 at the end of the meeting, and also a few* of the luna cocoons. 



