UB OCCASIONAL PAPERS. 



while close at home akin to the continual delight 

 of childhood at the gradual opening of the wealth of 

 novelty in the world around. 



For myself, I shall never forget the delight with 

 which, years ago, I watched a caterpillar undergo its 

 wondrous transformations, when even the larva of a 

 cabbage butterfly proved a thing of beauty ; or the 

 astonishment which filled me, not unaccompanied by 

 reverence, as I saw the resurrection of a Peacock 

 Butterfly from its six weeks' entombment. It had 

 entered its shroud a creeping thing of earth, it 

 emerged a joyous bright tenant of air how changed 

 and beautified. We can understand the entomologist 

 who in his feeble old age would be wheeled to a 

 sunny hillside and spend hours in watching the 

 gambols of the creatures which had been his daily 

 companions for years. 



Very often our interest in entomology is first 

 excited by seeing some creature more strange in its 

 habits or bizarre in aspect than others we have 

 known ; it was so in nay case on having (while living in 

 the outskirts of London) several caterpillars of the 

 Puss Moth brought to me from some willows close 

 by they came in company with a number of beautiful 

 niusk beetles and a thick fleshy larva of the Goat 

 Moth with its peculiar odour. Of the latter I could 

 make nothing ; I did not know its food, and only 

 kept it long enough to learn that it could gnaw a 

 hole through a box like a rat. But the Puss 

 Caterpillars ate, and grew, and their colours grew 

 blighter and brighter, though i failed in rearing them 

 for that time. Since then never a year has passed 

 without my rearing boxes of caterpillars and my 



