282 BUTTERFLIES 



feelers. They must lay their eggs and thus provide for 

 the continuation of the species; to do this they find suit- 

 able blades of grass on which they deposit their tiny, half- 

 round, smooth yellow eggs. A week or so later each 

 egg hatches into a dumpy little yellow caterpillar with a 

 black head and a body well covered with hairy bristles. 

 This little creature is a silk spinner and makes a home in- 

 stinctively by drawing together more or less the outer 

 edges of a leaf blade and fastening them with transverse 

 bands of silk. It then feeds upon the green tissues and 

 as it grows larger it makes its nest more secure by thicker 

 walls of silken web. 



When full grown as a caterpillar it changes into a slender 

 chrysalis generally of a grayish red color, thickly dotted 

 with black. About ten days later it emerges as a butter- 

 fly. (See plate, page 192.) 



The Least Skipper is one of the most widely distributed 

 of all butterflies. It occurs from New England to Texas, 

 south to Florida on the east coast, and west to the Rocky 

 Mountains. 



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