CATERPILLARS. 87 



Some of them are as long as wasps, although with a slender 

 body, no thicker than a bodkin ; some so tiny that they can 

 scarce be seen with the naked eye ; but all are alike in their 

 habits. Watch one, large or small, as he settles upon a 

 leaf. Straightway he begins to hunt up and down with 

 quick eager motion, like a dog quartering a turnip field for 

 partridges. Up and down, below and above, prying into 

 every cranny, he hunts, hurrying from one leaf to another 

 until he finds a caterpillar. He wastes no time with him, 

 but thrusts the long ovipositor through the skin, and places 

 an egg there snugly. He repeats this two, three, or half a 

 dozen times, according to his own size, and that to which 

 the caterpillar will grow. His young ones must be fed 

 where they are hatched, and it would not do to lay more 

 than the caterpillar can support. What the sensations of 

 the caterpillar are when thus treated no one has so far 

 attempted to explain. It gives a little wince each time the 

 operation is performed, and then pursues its vocation as 

 quietly as if nothing had happened. There can be little 

 doubt that it is profoundly discouraged ; it must feel that 

 all its efforts to elude the foe have been wasted. It doubt- 

 less knows that it has received its death wound, that it will 

 never soar in the air as a bright-winged butterfly, and that 

 its chrysalis state will be its last. It speaks well, then, for 

 the sense of duty of the caterpillar, that it goes as doggedly 

 on as before, eating as largely and steadily as if nothing 

 had occurred, and showing no sign of pain or disturbance 

 at the birth of foes, who soon begin to gnaw away at its 

 interior. It is to be hoped, indeed, that it suffers but 

 slightly. The organs of the caterpillar are simple. It is 

 little more than a tube, and it is probable that its sensibility 



