BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS. Ill 



fly; so the caterpillar has breathing holes through 

 which the air passes in to meet the blood. 



The habits of the two are very different. The one 

 flies, the other crawls. The mother sips nectar from 

 flowers, and has a small stomach like a thread. The 

 child is nearly all stomach, and feeds upon leaves. Its 

 destructiveness may be judged by the enormous amount 

 it eats. The first day of its life it eats twice its own 

 weight. At the end of a month it may have eaten 

 forty thousand times its weight. By this greediness it 

 lays away a large store of fat. 



To accommodate so rapid a growth, the caterpillar 

 needs a new and larger suit of clothes, now and then. 

 Its life is only a few weeks long, and during this time 

 it changes its skin six times. The skin splits down 

 the back and is shuffled off. The skins of some are 

 smooth ; of others are hairy, or covered with stiff 

 bristles, to protect them against other in- 

 sects and against birds. 



After a time this ugly child of a beau- 

 tiful mother ceases to eat. It abandons 

 the green leaf of apple, or clover, or 

 cabbage upon which it has been feed- 

 ing, throws off its skin and the lining 

 of its stomach, and becomes a pupa. 

 Under its chin is a little spinner from 

 which issues a silken thread. One pa- Hanging Chry8alis - 

 pilio fastens its tail to a support and runs a silk thread 

 around the middle of its body to hold it secure. Some 

 kinds merely hang from the tail. In this state it re- 

 mains from ten to fifteen days, and is called a chrysa- 

 lis which means gold-colored sheath because some 



