The Arbutus Caterpillar 



defined circumstances; and this cooperation 

 was wanting. Chance perhaps will one day 

 teach me more than I want to know; I shall 

 be attacked in the manner familiar to the 

 woodcutters and shall pass a night in torment, 

 tossing and turning as though on a bed of 

 live coals. 



What the direct contact of the caterpillar 

 did not teach me the artifices of chemistry will 

 demonstrate with a violence which I was far 

 from expecting. I treat the caterpillar with 

 ether, just as I treated the slough of the Pine 

 Processionary. The number of the creatures 

 taken for the infusion — they are pretty small 

 as yet, are scarcely half the size which 

 they will attain when mature — is about a 

 hundred. After a couple of days' maceration, 

 I filter the liquid and leave it to evaporate 

 freely. With the few drops that remain I 

 soak a square of blotting-paper folded in four 

 and apply it to the inner surface of my fore- 

 arm, with a thin rubber sheet and a bandage. 

 It is an exact repetition of what I did with 

 the Pine Processionary. 



Applied in the morning, the blister hardly 

 takes effect until the following night. Then 

 by degrees the irritation becomes unendurable ; 



159 



