CATERPILLARS INNUMERABLE 128 



JUNE 



CATERPILLARS INNUMERABLE 



is a row of young poplar trees at the 

 bottom of our sea-side garden. The leaves 

 are shiny and tender, scarcely able to hold themselves 

 up in the heat of the day. No envious tooth has 

 yet marred their fair symmetry. But at night 

 a feathery puss-moth visits them, three inches 

 square of wing and downy as an owl. In the 

 morning there is a little brown tent about the 

 size of a pin's head on this leaf, two on another, 

 a fourth yonder, and others no doubt on other 

 poplars, willows or sallows within a half-mile 

 radius. 



The puss-moth's egg is unlike that of most 

 moths or butterflies in that instead of being a 

 spherical body attached to the leaf by a tangent, 

 it stands on a flat base and is dome-shaped, just 

 like a spot of liquid that has been spilt there and 

 left to harden. And it is chocolate-brown against 

 the tender green of the leaf on the surface of which 

 it is laid for all the world to see. I can see the 



