414 TENANTS OF AN OLD FARM. 



"Perhaps the most pei-fect examples of the tailor's 

 art in the insect world are found among the Lepidop- 

 tera. Butterflies, and especially moths, are famous for 

 sewed habitations." 



" Moths !" exclaimed the Mistress. " You amaze 

 me. I thought they flitted from flower to shrub, and 

 build themselves no homes at all." 



" That is true of the imago or winged insect," I an- 

 swered. " But you forget that the adult life of moth or 

 butterfly is the shortest nart of its existence. In that 

 estate it is reall}" an uninteresting creature, for the most 

 part, and challenges attention chiefly by its form and 

 colors. It is in tlie caterpillar state, the most odious to 

 the ordinary observer tliat the naturalist finds the most 

 interesting habits. Here, now, is a nest made proba- 

 bly by the caterpillar of a species of Tortrix. I 

 found it on the edge of the woods back of Asbury 

 Park within sight of the ocean. I have seen multi- 

 tudes of these globular nests about the size of an Eng- 

 lish walnut, rolled up at the tips of the leaves of the 

 great fern, Aspidiiim thelypteris (Fig. 129.) See how 

 deftly the leaves have been rounded and sewed into this 

 spherical mass ! And here is the little door out of which 

 the transformed insect made its escape. Small forests 

 of this fern grow in low and moist places along our 

 Atlantic coast, and there 3'ou may find colonies of this 

 leaf-roller or their abandoned nests in the months of 

 July and August." 



"I have often noted those clumps of tall ferns in my 

 sununer saunterings by the sea," remarked Abb^-; "but 



