BREEDING. 13 



appears ; then a few hours later to kill and set it. If 

 breeding from the egg is going to be tried, the eggs 

 must be attached to the food-plant, so that the food 

 may be at hand as soon as the larvae come out. Of 

 course caterpillars thrive best on actual living plants, and 

 they may often be left to themselves on one without 

 much fear of their moving from it until the time for 

 pupating draws near. If it is not thought well to give 

 them carte blanche in this way, a bag of gauze may be 

 tied over them and the branch on which they are 

 feeding. In the event of the food-plant being small, it 

 is an excellent plan to have it growing in a flower-pot, 

 covering the whole either with gauze or with a glass 

 cylinder capped with gauze. 



If preferred, larvae may be reared indoors in some 

 kind of cage : a tin or chip box, or something of 

 that kind, a few inches in diameter, and eight or ten 

 inches high, will do very nicely. On the floor of this 

 cage a couple of inches of fine earth or sand had 

 better be strewn. In the centre of this layer of earth 

 should be placed a narrow-necked bottle containing a 

 sprig of the food-plant. A little cotton-wool round 

 the stem will make it fit the bottle, and so remove 

 the chance of small larvae being drowned. About a 

 dozen eggs having been fastened on the sprig, 

 the top of the cage must be covered with gauze to 

 prevent the escape of the larvae. It is as well, if a 

 tin box is used, to make the inside of it rough, so 

 that the caterpillars may be able to reach the food-plant 

 again should they fall from it. The box may be 

 roughened by smearing it with moist sand. When 

 renewing the food-plant, the larvae must on no account 

 be lifted with the fingers : they should be shaken from the 

 old to the new twigs, or at most, be lightly touched with 



