206 THE IDYL OF THE SPLIT-BAMBOO 



In Summer or early Fall, the caterpillar season, some 

 boxes large enough to hold your captures without 

 crushing them will be advisable. As for clothing, 

 wear the oldest and toughest you have. It is not 

 especially conducive to the beauty of head-, foot-, or 

 body-gear to go crushing through bushes, briars, and 

 shrubs, over bogs and swamps, or to crowd up trees 

 and into other places difficult of access in which 

 some caterpillars seem to have taken a fiendish de- 

 light to spin. An umbrella with a crook for a handle 

 is helpful in pulling down branches or twigs just out 

 of one's unaided reach, where frequently fat cocoons 

 are attached. A fish-line with a weight on the end 

 is serviceable for bringing down those branches a 

 little too high for the umbrella. If you are work- 

 ing among trees of any size, a long pole with a 

 triangle-hook attached will enable you to reach 

 cocoons spun by worms of the most aspiring spirit. 

 The most valuable item in your equipment you will 

 not be able to take with you at first a general abil- 

 ity to distinguish good territory from bad and to 

 " smell out " every specimen in the locality. 



Let us suppose it is Fall or early Winter, and you 

 are hunting cecropia and polyphemus. You should 

 follow along the road or street studying carefully 

 the trees and shrubbery. Luckily enough for the 

 hunter, cocoons as a rule are not found in high, dense 

 vegetation or inside of groves or woods. Circle 

 around the outside of such places, studying carefully 



