Building a Make-Believe Insect 



21 



life to our wax-made worm and it can absorb food, 

 but it has no feeling, it has no sight, no taste, so 

 that it will eat any old thing as food. This is be- 

 cause we have not supplied it with the battery, so 

 to speak, and connecting 

 telegraph lines which we 

 call nerves and which make 

 it possible for live creat- 

 ures to see, taste, smell, 

 and feel. To do this it 

 will be necessary for us 

 to run a telegraph line 

 through our wax form, 

 from end to end, and to 

 have small branch lines 

 running to the sm-face. 

 Fig. 4 shows one of these 

 telegraphic systems such as 

 is really found in a cater- 

 pillar. Now then, Vvhcn- 

 ever these wires are short-circuited, our wax-worm 

 will be doubled with 23ain. The principal differ- 

 ence between this system in the caterpillar and the 

 system in the body of the reader lies in the fact that 

 the central station is not of so much importance 



