WINTER TENANTS OF OUR TREES. 43 



sacrificed life of tlie despised silk-worm. The larva of 

 our Polyphemus moth is thick, fleshy, striped obliquely 

 with white on the sides, with angulated segments or 

 'joints,' ou which are tubercles surmounted by a few 

 soft hairs. They are hatched about the close of June 

 from eggs laid singly by the mother moth on the under 

 sides of leaves. Ten or twelve days intervene between 

 the deposit of the eggs and the hatching of the larva. 



" Then begins the feeding, which is not a simple eat- 

 ing, but a storing of food that must sustain nature 

 during the long winter sleep, and in some cases, as with 

 Cecropia, for example, during the life of the perfect in- 

 sect when it has transformed. Not only that, but it 

 must take in enough to supply the curious natural 

 workshop within it with the crude material from which 

 comes the silken fibre that turnishes its winter home. 

 Those are busy days, therefore, for the 3'oung worm 

 during the long svnnmer. 



" But it has periods of rest from its voracious eating. 

 Late in the afternoon of a summer day, if you would 

 peep among the leafy barricades of these oak-boughs, 

 you might see our worm undergoing the tedious process 

 of shedding its own clothes, or moulting. As the grub 

 grows, the outer skin tightens and hardens ; since it 

 cannot yield, and as the creature must grow while it 

 eats, the only thing to be done is to get rid of the im- 

 pediment. Therefore Dame Nature, like a careful 

 nurse, strips the young Polyphemus and puts it aside 

 to rest awhile. 



" Somethiuij analogous occiirs to the human intellect 



