comparison and tardy skill wrung from much practice) the basket 

 is finished, a triumph in "arts and crafts" or "domestic art" — any 

 human would do well humbly to watch one inexperienced caterpillar 

 weave one cocoon. Any of the spinning species will serve this 

 purpose ; but because most of them are soon hidden within an outer 

 layer which they construct first the whole process seldom can be 

 followed. Our grass caterpillar, however, has a different method 

 and can be watched until the cocoon is almost completed. 



He is not critical as to the slope of the foundation against which 

 his masterpiece is to rest. Whether it be horizontal, vertical or any 

 angle between, seems a matter of indifference to him. An individual, 

 therefore, who has selected the lower edge of a fence board may as 

 well be chosen as any for the convenience of description. 



He first makes, with the silk which drools from the spinneret in 

 his mouth, a thin mat about his own length. Clinging to this by the 

 hooks of his "false" feet, he works, back down, at the sides and ends 

 of the cocoon which, after a deal of patient labor, outline a shallow 

 oval with the edges about evenly woven down to perhaps an eighth 

 of an inch. The fabric that he weaves, unlike that of many species, 

 has but little silk in it, for his cocoon is chiefly of hair-cloth. Now 

 that the framework is well started, it is easier to watch him as he 

 clings, still back down, weaving, with warp of hair and weft of silk, 

 his flawless cloth. The source of his silk, a liquid stiffened by the 

 first air that touches it, has been indicated, but whence the hairy 

 warp that composes the heavier part of the texture? Look — he 

 swings the first few segments of his body to one side, and reaching 

 back with his head, grasps a mouthful of hair close to his skin, and 

 pulls. The wisp secured, he swings his head back to the cocoon 

 edge and tucks it endwise into the entangling silk, giving it a tug 

 which anchors it by the barbs on the hair. Then throwing his newly 

 spun silk in and out, he weaves the filmy weft that holds the hairy 

 warp in place. 



After he has worked the cocoon edge down to the fairly even 

 width of about one-eighth of an inch, he weaves longer at one place, 

 devoting himself for some time to one curved end before, with cau- 

 tious creep, he turns him right about face and weaves concavely at 

 the other end. Plucking the hair from his skin, mouthful by mouth- 

 ful, putting each wisp into place and winding it with new spun silk, 

 he weaves his flawless blanket, shaping it into a sleeping bag as he 

 works. He labors without waste of time or material and with no 

 false moves. When spinning and weaving at the right of him he 

 pulls out hair from the right side of his body, not reaching to the 

 left for his supply. He grasps his little bundle of hair in such a 

 way that it can be poked into place in the cocoon edge and tugged 

 tight with a deft in and out motion, without shifting his hold on it — 

 uprooting it from his skin and embedding it in the cocoon edge with- 



13 



