April, 



1900. 



Junior-Naturalist Monthly. 



Issued by the College of Agriculture and Experiment Station of Cornell University, 

 under Chapter 430 of the Laws of 1899, of the State of New York. 



Entered at the Post Office at Ithaca, N. Y., as second class matter. 



Vol. I. 



CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, N. Y. 



No. 7 



THE FOUR CHAPTERS IN AN INSECT'S LIFE. 



N April and May is a good time to begin 

 the study of insects. You will not be ex- 

 pected to remember uninteresting facts. I 

 shall not even ask you to learn that in order 

 to be an insect a creature must have six 

 legs, a pair of feelers (antennae) and usually, 

 when fully grown, one or two pairs of 

 wings. Of course, this knowledge would 

 be valuable to you on many occasions. For instance, when you see 

 a spider you could tell him that he cannot be an insect for he has 

 too many legs ; while you would be able to inform any " thousand 

 legged worm " which you might happen to meet that his case is even 

 more hopeless. 



I wish you would write the history of an insect this year ; not as 

 you read it in a book but as the insect tells it to you. Some of the 

 histories can be written in two chapters, but these are not the most 

 interesting. Katydid's is longer. From the way she monopolizes 

 the conversation evenings, one would think she is the only creature 

 in the world that ever existed as an egg, a nymph and a fully grown 

 insect. You probably do not know what a nymph is, but katydid 

 or a grasshopper or a cicada will tell you some day. They are a 

 noisy folk — these three insects — and it is a good thing for us that 

 their history is limited to three chapters. J ust imagine how they 

 might chirp and chatter and sing if they had four periods in their 

 life story as the tent-caterpillar has ! 



The insects which pass through four stages in their lives are so 

 wonderful that I consulted Mother Nature as to the best way in 



611 



