CHAPTER SIX 



SPHINX AND HAWK MH^LERS, JUG-HANDLES AND TOBACCO 

 WORMS. NOTCH-WINGED MOTHS 



Some of the caterpillar family have acquired 

 the drug habit, and are what the newspapers would 

 call " dope fiends," but the poison seems to agree 

 with them and does not affect their health or their 

 nerves; they wax fat upon a diet of tomato leaves, 

 tobacco leaves and potato leaves, all of which we 

 know are exceedingly unwholesome and dangerous 

 for human beings to eat. These caterpillars, how- 

 ever, even devour the poison leaves of the jimson 

 weed (Datura). 



Jimson weed is not well known up North and 

 it is only of late years that it has appeared around 

 New York, but it is the common weed of the va- 

 cant lots in the Ohio valley. It has a prickly pod 

 of poison seed and a morning-glory-shaped blos- 

 som. The blossom is a great resort for bees, which 

 may easily be caught when they enter the flower, 

 by pinching up the end of the flower and imprison- 

 ing the insect. 



The boys call the caterpillars of the Five- 



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