THE MOTH AND ITS EGGS. 7 



before "winter begins. If you could carefully open one of the 

 little cylinder-like eggshells during cold weather you would 

 find the fully formed caterpillar within. It is such a condition 

 as would occur if a hen's egg developed into a chick which 

 remained alive inside the shell for several months before peck- 

 ing its way out. 



When the long months of waiting through the cold winter 

 are passed, the spring sunshine wakens the caterpillars to life. 

 Then they gnaw through the thin eggshells and crawl out to 

 find themselves in a strange new world. Beside them are the 

 buds bursting into leaf, and, led by that strange knowledge 

 which we call instinct, the band of little caterpillars crawls 

 down the twig to the nearest fork in the branches. Here they 

 spin a silken web which is the beginning of the tent or "nest." 

 They stay in it at night and at other times when not feeding 

 upon the leaves. 



About a week after the caterpillars have hatched, their 

 bodies have so increased in size that they must provide them- 

 selves with a skin larger than the one with which they were 

 born ; for insects do not grow as the higher animals do. With 

 the latter the skin grows along with the body, but with the 

 former it does not stretch and cannot increase in size. So 

 some day the colony of caterpillars remains at .home beneath 

 the silken folds of the tent. The skin of each splits open 

 along the back, and the caterpillar crawls out of the old skin 

 clothed in a new one that had been formed beneath the other. 



When the caterpillars become used to the new clothes thus 

 so kindly provided by Mother Nature, they sally forth again in 

 search of food. This skin-shedding process is called moulting. 

 It is repeated several times during the lives of the caterpillars, 

 which become full-grown in about six weeks. They then 

 resemble Fig. 2, and are nearly two inches long. The body is 



