CATERPILLARS INNUMERABLE 127 



going on a long journey among the hawk-moths, of 

 which I have named but a few, leaving out some 

 of the strangest, such as the elephant hawk. On 

 another side the puss-moth touches the lobster, 

 for that is a still stranger example of protection by 

 aggressive appearance. The lobster caterpillar 

 does not end behind in prolegs like a respectable 

 caterpillar, but has a large flat tail upreared like 

 the business end of a scorpion. The backs of its 

 segments are cut into all manner of rugosities, 

 and the creature is in the brown of the leaf scales 

 of the beech, on which tree it feeds. The real legs 

 of the caterpillar, those carried next the head, are 

 abnormally long, and when the animal is alarmed 

 it throws head and tail together, till it looks like 

 a particularly venomous spider ready to put its 

 long legs round the enemy, and poison it out of 

 hand. It is suggested that when the ichneumon 

 fly sees this it flees in alarm, and that even the 

 birds do the same. 



These are the giants among caterpillars, but they 

 are not nearly of so much importance as many 

 lesser ones. There has never been and never will 

 be a plague of eyed hawks on our apple trees, 

 which are devastated nearly every year by a far 

 humbler caterpillar, with black dots on a dark 

 grey ground, called the little ermine. This 

 creature comes not as single spies but in battalions. 

 We find them everywhere in summer, done up by 

 hundreds in silken webs of their own contriving, 

 camping on branches of fruit trees or other timber, 



