134 THE RING OF NATURE 



grey fence round the coppice there are caterpillars 

 encased in grey splinters of wood, just as caddis 

 grubs encase themselves under water. There 

 are others living their grubhood inside the leaves, 

 that is between the upper and lower layer of the 

 leaf as it lies flat. Others snip a bit of leaf and roll 

 it into a jacket, under which they can walk like 

 green snails, and thus escape the attention of birds 

 with an eye for colour, and a very large army of 

 them roll the leaves into little hollow cigarettes, 

 in the interior of which they live while they eat 

 the inner folds. 



4 But really,' asks the reader, ' are these riff-raff 

 worth mentioning ? ' Well, has he ever watched 

 one of these leaf-rollers in the act of constructing 

 its cigarette ? Does he not wonder how it is done ? 

 If he were given a sheet of iron one-eighth of an 

 inch thick and twelve feet by nine, as much cotton 

 as he liked and a pot of glue, how long would it 

 take him to roll himself up in the iron as neatly as 

 a caterpillar does in the leaf, without hands and 

 solely by spinning web from its mouth ? Here in 

 every tree and on every hedge, often under our 

 very nose and unseeing eyes, is being performed 

 a piece of work as wonderful as that excellent 

 effort of Victor Hugo's imagination, the single- 

 handed salving of a rock-fast ship, in Toilers of 

 the Sea. (And as the prospect of watching a leaf- 

 roller at work is certain to exceed the delights of 

 reading further about mere peacocks and red 

 admirals, here the chapter ends.) 



