UNCLE IN ENGLAND. 193 



carnations, and various plants to trim and tie up ; 

 besides the daily occupations of weeding, watering, 

 pruning, and earthing. 



Sth. I have just found the most curious 

 miniature cocoons of yellow cotton, sticking on 

 a chrysalis of the cabbage caterpillar. Some 

 time ago I put up two of these caterpillars in 

 paper boxes ; they were regularly fed, and made 

 quite comfortable ; and now though one is a 

 perfectly sound chrysalis, the other is only an 

 empty skin. In the little book which I have so 

 often mentioned, Mary shewed me the cause of 

 this in the dialogue between Lucy and her mo- 

 ther on ichneumons it was from their eggs, 

 which were deposited in the body of the cater- 

 pillar, that the maggots proceeded who destroyed 

 it, and then spun those pretty little yellow co- 

 coons. It is a great pleasure, mamma, to have 

 traced a curious fact of this kind for myself, and 

 actually to have seen one chrysalis dwelling in 

 another. These ichneumons must be very use- 

 ful in thus destroying other mischievous insects : 

 Reaumur found, that out of thirty common cab- 

 bage caterpillars which he put, into a glass to 

 feed, twenty-five were killed by an ichneumon ; 

 and my aunt says, that if the myriads of cater- 

 pillars which prey on cur vegetables, are com- 

 pared with the small number of butterflies that 

 they usually produce, it will appear that they are 



