HOME-GROWN SILKWORM-GUT 205 



the caterpillar has chosen to spin. The caterpillar 

 may elect to spin on its food-plant, or it may wander 

 away and spin on almost any suitable stalk or twig. 

 Its cocoon has been found on maple, willow, wood- 

 bine, oak, plum, elder, wild cherry, spicewood, apple, 

 pear, nettle, wild hemlock, sumach, ailanthus, and 

 other varieties " too numerous to mention." 



It is worth while to look almost anywhere in a 

 locality in which cocoons are being found. Usually 

 there is more or less of a little colony discoverable 

 where a single cocoon has been discovered. You 

 may pick a cocoon plastered to the trunk of a tree 

 at its very root, or attached to a shoot but a few 

 inches from the ground; then as you glance up you 

 notice the brown, baggy bunch thirty feet in the air, 

 spun alongside the tip of the twig. No place is too 

 unusual or insignificant to be overlooked, though one 

 soon develops a special sense in searching. 



Your equipment for cocoon-hunting need not be 

 elaborate. There are some things that are helpful, 

 if not really necessary. You can put in your pocket 

 the cocoons that you find, if you wish, though there 

 is danger of crushing them; a bag or a box of some 

 kind is better. If you are abroad in the Spring, 

 when the moth is laying its eggs, some little paper or 

 tin boxes will make good receptacles for your 

 " finds." In the same season you will need larger 

 boxes in which to put any moths you may capture, 

 and a net will be necessary for taking the specimens. 



