78 EYE SPY 
with it the connection from the spiracles at the 
sides of the body. At last, with one final effort, 
the skin behind the head ruptures, and discloses 
the new skin beneath, and through the opening 
thus made the new head soon appears, and the 
entire new suit of clothes emerges in a few mo- 
ments. But though the old clothes are worked 
off into a little shrunken pellet at the tail, the old 
head-shell is still retained, being attached to the 
hairs immediately back of the new head, and thus 
retained. Five or six times in the life of the cat- 
erpillar this same process is performed, each per- 
formance leaving its token ; so that our " profess- 
or " enjoys the unique distinction of being able, in 
his mature years, to look up to the head he wore 
when he was a baby or youngster, and make it 
useful, too, in keeping off the flies as he ponders 
on the flight of time. 
But this is not all our professor's peculiarities. 
One day, as I came to look at my hump-backed 
pets, I discovered that most of them had shrunk 
a full third, and had refused to eat and, what sur- 
prised me more, refused to wiggle. A closer ex- 
amination of the box showed that while they had 
ignored the lilac leaves, they had been gnawing 
the pasteboard everywhere in the box, even per- 
forating it with a number of holes. The cap- 
tives in a thin wooden box were similarly affected, 
and numbers of holes were to be seen. What did 
