NOVEMBER 229 



"Touch it." 



I touched it, and the little branch seemed 

 suspiciously soft. 



It was a geometer caterpillar, so cleverly dis- 

 guised that I positively could not distinguish it, 

 except by feeling, from the branch which supported 

 it. Wonderfully had this insect protected itself by 

 its extraordinary resemblance to the twig on which 

 it had intended to spend the autumn. The hind 

 claspers fitted tightly into a groove of the brier's 

 main stem, the head and true legs being crumpled 

 up into the appearance of a shrivelled-looking twig. 

 With a silken thread or two it had fastened itself 

 into a fairly secure position, there to pass its time 

 of waiting before becoming a chrysalis. 



" Show me something else," I said to Petunia. 



" November is a particularly bad time for finding 

 examples of protective resemblance, but we will go 

 along the hedge and keep our eyes open." 



We kept our eyes very wide open indeed, but 

 nothing happened again till we reached the pond. 

 Petunia would have told me the Latin name of 

 every weed in it, but real live adventures with 

 caterpillars or other insects are far more interesting 

 to my mind than that section of science which some- 

 one has described as "all names and no powers," 

 and so we raked the water with long branches to 

 discover fresh wonders. And, sure enough, some- 

 thing turned up at last. We pulled in a tendril of 

 the pretty American weed called Anacharis, and 

 remarked that it seemed to have taken to growing 

 by side shoots instead of in its usual straight fashion. 

 Abnormal appearances always excite Petunia, and 



