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CATERPILLARS} . 177 
CATERPILLARS : 
HOW TO FIND, AND HOW TO REAR THEM.* 
BY THE REY. C. F. THORNEWILL, M.A. 
I must confess to a certain amount of apprehension with regard to 
my subject of this evening how far its title may have tended to frighten 
away some proportion of my possible auditors. To many persons—and 
more especially perhaps to those of the faiter sex—a caterpillar is an 
exceedingly repulsive creature, kiiown chiefly as a disagreeable intruder 
at thé dinner-table when a careless cook has served it up in the company 
of the vegetables on which it feeds. To the British schoolboy—at all 
events in the days before natural science was so extensively taught in our 
schools as it is now—it was principally known as a thing to be stamped 
upon, or Sometimes used as an instrument of torture upon a nervous 
schoolfellow; and I have recently heard of it, strange to say, as an 
unwitting agent for the encouragement of gambling, it being reported 
that the desolate condition of a certain estate in this neighbourhood is 
due to tlie former owner having lost all his money by betting upon races 
of caterpillars. “To stich base uses,” as the immortal Shakespeare has¥ 
it, ‘‘ may we all (even caterpillars) return.” 
_ But to-night I am going to speak of caterpillars as they appear to 
the eye of the Naturalist; and especially to that of the Entomologist. 
And to these—more particularly of course to the latter—a caterpillar, 
when not riditulously common, is a treasure to be picked up with avidity, 
watched over with solicitude, and reared with cate through all its stages, 
until it finally appears as a ‘‘ bred specimen” in the well-secured drawers 
of his cabinet. One of the best specimens in my own colléction, a fine 
Acronycta Alni, has such a history as this. I found the caterpillar, a 
splendid fellow in black and gold, crawling across the path one day in 
1877, as I walked down from my house into the town; and, although I 
could have bought a perfect specimen from a London dealer for 15s., I 
felt quite as much pleased as if I had found a sovereign. 
But I have undertaken to-night to give you some information upon 
two points connected with caterpillars, viz:, how to find, and how to rear 
them. There are two members of this Society, if not more, who could 
have told you all about it much better than I can; but I tried both of 
them in vain, and at last I followed the advice of the proverb, “If you 
want a thing done, do it yourself.” 
First, then, lei me give a few hints—partly gathered from my own 
éxpérience, and partly derived from books—upon the best methods of 
finding catérpillars. There are three such methods commonly employed, 
viz., Searching, beating, and sweeping; and of these three the first is of 
course by far the most scientific, and therefore the most to be recom- 
mended to the earnest student of nature. It consists in the examination; 
more or less minute, of the objects upon which the insects feed, with a 
* This paper was red at the meeting of the Burton-on-Trent Natural History 
gre Archzological Society, on Tuesday, April 8th, by the Rev. C. F. Thornewill} 
., Vice-President of the Soc ciety. 
