SOME STRUCTURES AND INSTINCTS 

 OF COMMON INSECTS 



PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARY CYNTHIA DICKERSON 





f 



Approaching winter catches the second brood of the viceroy butterfly in the early caterpillar stage and the 

 small atom of life must protect itself as best it may. It sets about to build a house by a rather elaborate process: 

 it cuts a leaf, as above, and continues until both sides fall away; then with threads of silk it draws one side of 

 the remnant of the leaf over to the other side, above its head. It fastens the stem securely to the twig, and lines 

 the house with many layers of silk. Then it crawls in headfirst, and hibernates nearly si.x months, swept by 

 boisterous winds in a temperature often below the zero point 



Bleak open a decaying chestnut stump in the frozen winter woods and in its frost-lined chambers we may find 

 dozens of hibernating glowworms, each bearing its cold light. Who can explain this hibernation, when even 

 breathing is suspended? Who can explain the glowworm's light? Who the instinct that teaches insects to crowd 

 together in winter quarters, when the woods present hundreds of places apparently equally good ? Insects may 

 be frozen "stiff" so that they break at a touch like fragile glass, yet return to their full vitality at once on a 

 renewal of high temperature. Each glowwonn of the species shown above changes into a white and pink chrysalis 

 in May, which after a week sheds the skin and becomes a firefly, a black beetle ornamented with red and yellow 

 on the thorax 



Courtesy ofGtnn and Company ami DoubUday^ Pa^e and Company 



529 



