HUNTING 43 



backs of woodbine-leaves, are of the exact shade of 

 green shown by the leaves, and look more like small 

 drops of water through which the leaf color shows 

 than like anything else — to the untrained eye. The 

 eggs of poh/pJicmns are white with a brown band 

 around them, of just the colors of the warts or excres- 

 cences on white-birch twigs. The eggs of D. inscripta, 

 laid among the flower-buds of woodbine, are so like 

 these buds in size, shape, and color that a keen-eyed 

 doctor, a naturalist himself, told us that he thought 

 we had " made a mistake for once," and it needed a 

 magnifier and forceps to convince him that the eggs 

 were not buds growing in the clusters. So the young 

 sphingid caterpillars are usually of the exact color of 

 the leaves on which they rest and feed, but they may 

 be traced by tiny holes through the leaf, then by 

 ragged bites on the edges of the leaf, and as they grow 

 larger by bare midribs and stems. Holes through the 

 leaves are not a sure sign of caterpillars, however, for 

 some are made by beetle-larvae, and clean semicircles 

 cut from leaf-edges mean leaf-cutter bees. Eyes are 

 soon trained to distinguish, and a certain unconscious 

 knowledge comes to the caterpillar-hunter — an intui- 

 tion, not the result of any conscious process of thought 

 or reasoning. To the caterpillar-hunter, " What has 

 been eating this bush?" is not slang, but a question of 

 importance and great interest. Larger caterpillars are 

 protected in different ways. Some resemble the leaves 

 and twigs among which they live, and their colored 

 marks curiously follow the changing colors of the 

 maturing leaves, as in ast/jhis and vij/ops, which are 

 plain green when young, but gain red marks as they 



