Silk- Worms and Giant Night-Butterflies 83 



o' 



of the egg-shell still on it and it often has to turn 

 around and grasp the fragment of the shell with 

 its teeth (?) before it can pull it off. 



The babies have five suits of clothes before they 

 go into their cocoons, that is, they change their 

 skins or molt five times and each time they get a 

 new suit of clothes it is several sizes larger than 

 the old suit. 



You see it is this way: These little children 

 eat greedily and grow rapidly, but the skin does 

 not grow and at length it becomes too tight to hold 

 them; then they crack it open and crawl out; a 

 simple thing to do, but "All the king's horses and 

 all the king's men could not put them back" into 

 their skins again. 



The little babies at first are inclined to be red- 

 dish in color, but after changing their clothes they 

 assume a greenish hue, bluish-green above and yel- 

 lowish-green below. The Polyphemus caterpillar 

 is another one of the " German sausage " type 

 (Fig. 76). It is green and has bias or diagonal 

 white stripes on its sides. On the last division it 

 has purplish-colored Y-shaped decorations. All the 

 different divisions of the body are decorated witli 

 yellow warts, which naturalists call tubercles. As 



